I had a right pain getting long button presses to work, at least when I wanted it do something unusual. For instance, I can't control the volume through my empeg, only through my external HU, so I wanted the make the Volume Down on the SR80 perform the hush function (long hold of pause). For some reason, this would only work at the bottom of the config file (below the other irtranslate bits).
Also, I wanted to be able to search using the remote. As I wasn't using the volume up button, I had this enable search mode, and shift the buttons so that I could use the front buttons to search with. Took me ages to figure at that the shifted definitions have to go before the standard definitions.
Having said that, keys with a standard function for short press and long press work fine - i.e. I have the bottom of the four diamond buttons act as the bottom of the buttons on the empeg fascia. This will bring up the menu with a short press, and switch between text and visual with a long press, without having to do anything special.
Also, the IR signal comes out from the bottom of the device.
Hope this helps,
A.