ncurses

ncurses is a programming library that provides an API for creating text-based user interfaces in a terminal. It is a free software re-implementation of the curses library, designed to work with character terminals and the terminfo database, allowing programs to render and manage text windows in a terminal-agnostic way.

It provides facilities for window and screen management, color support, input handling, and high-level widgets. Key features include multiple overlapping windows, panels for stacking, colored text through color pairs, and support for mouse events. It also includes optional libraries for forms, menus, and pads for off-screen rendering, enabling complex text-based interfaces.

ncurses derives from the original curses interfaces used on Unix systems and has been maintained as the standard curses implementation on most Linux and BSD systems. It is portable across many Unix-like platforms and has ports or compatibility layers for Windows via environments such as Cygwin or MSYS2, and other environments offer ncurses-compatible interfaces.

License: ncurses is free software licensed under the GNU Lesser General Public License.