We are running a program from a bash script and that program launches several other programs in X. We would like the program launched from the bash script to remain on top with focus however the other programs take focus.

So is there a way from the cli to reset focus to the main app?
The reason for this is simple it is a kiosk style app with no user input whatsoever(no keyboard no mouse). So maybe a something that simulates keyboard input to <alt-tab> would work but I suspect there is something else to set focus with a pid or application name.

What are the options or is this a big dead end? I did some googleing but all I came up with was a setfocus from win32 api which obviously will not work in linux.

It depends on your window manager. If you are running Metacity, take a look at Devil's Pie.

Thanks cool program and I suggest it for people using all major window managers as it is for X11 and very handy for many applications. We are using blackbox which this does work with devilspie but it never focuses the window...it gives an error:

(devilspie:16044): Wnck-Warning **: Recieved a timestamp of 0; window activation may not function properly.

All the above being the case(devils pie simply uses standard x11 calls) is it possible to force X11 to only ever have focus on a specific window regardless of timestamp?

From looking at the comments, it looks like if wnck is older than 2.9.92 that devilspie will not pass timestamps. You can force the use of timestamps in the configure; that might resolve your problem.

Sorry for being so dull but I have looked at several tutorials on devilspie. I have not seen a reference to force or timestamp. Care to clear this up for me? Maybe point me to an example? Many thanks!

If your environment includes a version of libwnck that is older than 2.9.92, the configure scripts for devilspie disable the use of timestamps, which your error indicated. What I was suggesting is that you could modify the configure scripts to always assume that libwnck is newer than 2.9.92 by disabling the check and manually setting the result.

If that's not something you feel comfortable with, perhaps you could contact the devilspie author and see if he could include support for your environment.