[[User_interface|User_interface]] 

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 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 [[curses|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.

## External links

* [[Ncurses homepage|http://www.gnu.org/software/ncurses/ncurses.html]] 
* [[wiki:Self:HOWTO ncurses Programming|http://tldp.org/HOWTO/NCURSES-Programming-HOWTO/]] 
* [[Wikipedia article about Ncurses|http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/ncurses]].