Ways to control text-mode console output with ruby

Question

I'm interested in writing a text-mode "gui" application with ruby. This means I need to have a way to output text anywhere I want in the terminal, move cursor around and react directly to different keypresses. Using color would also be a nice plus.

Is ncurses the only (or clearly best) way to go, or are there other options to consider? I'm not saying there's anything wrong with ncurses, but I like to be aware of my options. (For information about using ncurses with Ruby, there's already another question.)

Answer 1

In C there were two historic choices for terminal blob graphics and text addressing: use ncurses or use the lower-level termcap/terminfo library. I imagine that for Ruby only ncurses bindings exist.

So I'm guessing that there are these choices:

• Use ncurses as you mentioned
• Use the lower-level termcap/terminfo lib. This doesn't really make any sense, plus you would probably have to make the ruby bindings yourself.
• There are a number of widget libraries that wrap ncurses. See Newt, and Dialog, and CDK. You would probably have to create the Ruby bindings.