No one has mentioned Curses::Widgets yet and it is a limited - though darn easy to use module. My Curses Chatterbox Client uses it (though the client itself is out of commission until PM.org stabilizes a bit). It behaves in a way that is not terribly unlike Tk and other GUIs and some clever code modularization should make your task fairly easy.

By the way, someone mentioned that Curses documentation is easy to find. I disagree - I've googled until I was blue in the face and the closest I ever came was RMS's tutorial for python. I think the documentation is rotten and virtually incomprehensible - but don't let that stop you!

Good luck, {NULE}
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http://www.nule.org