vedeu

"characters" is a bit misleading name for what it is: https://github.com/gavinlaking/vedeu/blob/master/lib/vedeu/s... - but yes, that's how it works.

From the headline alone it looks a lot like Urwid in Python-land: http://urwid.org/ Some compare&contrast would be a nice introduction for those who know one but not the other (like me). EDIT: it looks like this one really doesn't use ncurses at all relying instead on terminal escape codes: https://github.com/gavinlaking/vedeu/blob/master/lib/vedeu/s... Urwid can use that too, but has a few other display backends: http://urwid.org/reference/display_modules.html#module-urwid... Urwid is also MUCH older (first Changelog item from 2004). Of course, Urwid is still Python, so it may not be a good fit if you absolutely need a Ruby library.

I've been working on a terminal/console based GUI framework for Ruby for around 4/5 months. Its still very basic, but there's a complimentary mp3 playing app which uses it to showcase capabilities. Not quite cross-platform, and still needs a bit of work. Welcoming pull requests. Vedeu: https://github.com/gavinlaking/vedeu (The mp3 player; Playa: https://github.com/gavinlaking/playa).