A few gui questions

[jimi_hendrix]

for the following questions, answers my be for C, C++, or python. i would like the answers to be cross platform if possible but i realize i will probably need conio or ncurses

1) how do i output colored text?

2) how would i do a gui like top or nethack?

[geirha]

top and nethack does not have GUI (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphical_user_interface)s (well, there are some GUI versions of nethack, but not the original) so I'm assuming you are really asking CLI (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Command-line_interface) questions.

1) You can use ansi escape codes to get colors http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ANSI_escape_code

echo -e '\033[01;34mblue\033[0m'
2)

$ ldd /usr/bin/top /usr/lib/games/nethack/nethack-console
/usr/bin/top:
linux-gate.so.1 => (0xb7f95000)
libproc-3.2.7.so => /lib/libproc-3.2.7.so (0xb7f44000)
libncurses.so.5 => /lib/libncurses.so.5 (0xb7f14000)
libc.so.6 => /lib/tls/i686/cmov/libc.so.6 (0xb7db5000)
libdl.so.2 => /lib/tls/i686/cmov/libdl.so.2 (0xb7db1000)
/lib/ld-linux.so.2 (0xb7f7b000)
/usr/lib/games/nethack/nethack-console:
linux-gate.so.1 => (0xb7f20000)
libncurses.so.5 => /lib/libncurses.so.5 (0xb7edc000)
libc.so.6 => /lib/tls/i686/cmov/libc.so.6 (0xb7d7e000)
libdl.so.2 => /lib/tls/i686/cmov/libdl.so.2 (0xb7d79000)
/lib/ld-linux.so.2 (0xb7f21000)

I'd say ncurses.

[.Maleficus.]

1. Bash color codes work just fine in any of those languages. I don't know the technical term for them but "Bash color codes" in Google should yeild some results.

2. Curses/Ncurses would probably be the easiest way, other than writing your own framework.