🚀 go-pugleaf

I am learning to program.  I am also learning to program in
C++.  I am doing an excercise that requires drawing on the
screen.  Not fancy graphics, just character based stuff on a
plain ole 80x24 screen.  

I want to divide the screen into two sections.  

    The top twenty lines will be used for drawing geometric shapes
    -- this is a Draw Space Screen Object.  

    The bottom four lines will be used for interacting with
    the user -- this is the User Interface Screen Object. 

My prefernece would be to use cout and cin for the
user interface object and some kind of (X,Y) coordinate
addressing for the draw space screen object.

I do not have a fancy IDE and I am not about to get
one.  I am using gnu g++ v2.4 in a text based
environment.  That is the given.

I am planning on using curses to control the screen.
While this should do the trick, it will not allow me
to use cin and cout (I think!?!) for my user interface
screen object.  Instead, I will need to use addstr()
and getstr(). Not too bad.

My questions:

1.  Is there a library in g++ that is the oo equiv of
    curses I should be using instead?

2.  Any advice on using curses with g++.  Is there
    anything more I need to know than just 
    g++ -c MyClass.C -lcurses

You can also look at this message as a preamble to the
questions sure to follow. 

Thanks!

Arthur