readline-like program

[James Strother]

I'm not sure if this is the appropriate forum, if it isn't then I
would really appreciate any links you think might be useful.  I've
been attempting to write a program that would have a readline-like
interface.  After reading through the manpages it appears that I
should be doing something like:

  initscr();
  cbreak();
  noecho();
  keypad(stdscr,TRUE);
  for (;;) {
    int a = getch();
    /* do something */
  }

This sets the WINDOW size to the physical screen size, which is not
what I want.  I want the rest of the terminal to be unaffected with
just a single terminal-input line at the end.  I tried (and tried..)
various combinations of setupterm and newwin, but I couldn't quite
get it to work.  Is there a "curses" way to do this or am I stuck
using termcap?

Many Thanks,
  Jim Strother