Ncurses is a programming library providing an ?API, allowing the programmer to write text-based user interfaces, ?TUIs, in a terminal-independent manner. It also optimizes screen changes, in order to reduce the ?latency experienced when using remote Unix shell.
Ncurses stands for "new curses", and is a replacement for the discontinued 4.?4BSD classic http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/curses.
Ncurses is a part of the ?GNU project. It is one of the few GNU files not distributed under the GNU General Public License or GNU Lesser General Public License; it is distributed under a license like the X11 License, which is sometimes referred to as the MIT License.
See also: ?UbuntuLinux , with Ncurses installation and ?black screen.