Curses::Visterm is a "visual" terminal interface for curses
applications.  It provides the split-screen interface you may have
seen in console based IRC and MUD clients.

Visterm's interface includes four regions.  From top to bottom:

  A title bar.  Curses::Visterm supports many terminals, each with its
  own screen elements, and the title bar is a convenient way to
  remember which is currently active.

  A large scrolling terminal region.  In network clients, this is
  where remote output is shown.  Many features are supported, the most
  notable are colorized text and scrollback.

  A one- or two-line configurable status bar.  Just about anything can
  be placed here, including the current time, and statistics about the
  runtime operation of whatever program you write with it.

  A one-line entry bar, with many common editing keystrokes
  supported. It scrolls horizontally to allow more than just a
  screen's width of text.

Visterm uses the POE networking and multitasking framework to support
concurrent input from network sockets and the console, multiple
timers, and more.

Visterm is a "visual" terminal because it is display rather than line
oriented.  It takes up the full screen, provides scrollback features,
and allows you to edit input in what is essentially a one-line text
editor.  Similar features make vi the "visual" text editor, and are
elements of TinyFugue's "visual" mode.

 - http://www.egr.msu.edu/decs/facilities/software/vi.php#Whatis
 - http://www.muq.org/~hawkeye/tf/help/topics/mode.html

The tarball currently has no tests, but there are sample programs in
the examples directory.

Visterm installs the usual way:

  perl Makefile.PL
  make
  make install

The project is managed at SourceForge.  Various support resources are
available there.  Please see http://sourceforge.net/projects/visterm/
for more information.

-- Rocco Caputo - troc@pobox.com - http://poe.perl.org/