Termbox library is a simple and clean ncurses alternative. Of course everything has it's own price. In this case it's portability and stability.

Currently all sources are hosted on github:

GitHub (git://github.com/nsf/termbox.git)

Also I have uploaded a snapshot from git. And I will continue to do it from time to time.

Screenshot - demo program 'keyboard':

The interface only consists of 12(!) functions.

tb_init() // initialization
tb_shutdown() // shutdown

tb_width() // width of the terminal screen
tb_height() // height of the terminal screen

tb_clear() // clear buffer
tb_present() // sync internal buffer with terminal

tb_put_cell()
tb_change_cell()
tb_blit() // drawing functions

tb_select_input_mode() // change input mode
tb_peek_event() // peek a keyboard event
tb_poll_event() // wait for a keyboard event

It's extremly easy to use and fast to learn. I bet you can fully understand principles of this library in a day.