If you do: $ (sleep 2; tlclient) ^M $ ^M $ ^M Then the resulting tlclient shouldn't have focus. Since it does, we're probably doing something wrong with regard to the new focus semantics found in X. We should see if this can be fixed. The vncviewer that we spawn has the same issue.
Add a & to the first command and you'll have a working example ;)
Possibly solved by doing bug 3986? (and maybe also bug 3987)