Programming curses in Python

Curses is the standard toolkit for building complex interactive user interfaces on computer terminals and terminal emulators. Python has long supported the curses library but the supporting documentation has been meagre and the reader largely assumed to have knowledge of the underlying C library. This new book starts from an assumption that the reader knows Python but not C and has no previous experience of programming in curses. It covers the basics of using curses to read and write to the screen, introduces windows, colour handling and panels. It then moves on to building larger projects and using the third party dialog module alongside curses. It concludes with two case-studies: a mini spreadsheet-like program and the classic "Game of Life". A final chapter addresses some of the issues faced in translating existing C based curses programs to Python.