Splitting the console into 2 "parts"

Good morning,

I would like to make a little interface for an application which will split the console in 2 "parts":

1 top area to print messages & 1 command prompt.

The printed messages are asynchronous to the command prompt, what I mean is that while while the user types a command a message can be printed.

To be more clear I want to make an interface like vi in insert mode, but with a dynamic text area....

Personally, I thought to clear the console whenever a new message is to be printed and reprint it from the beginning with whatever a user has already printed, but I don't think that is good solution.

Could you guide me to nicer solution ?

Thank you.

Sounds interesting, are you familiar with "curses"/"ncurses"?

Of course what would be really nice is if you wrote a generic windowing system using curses that just allowed varying sized terminals to occupy the windows and used pseudo-terminals to talk to shells or programs running in those window spaces.

No, but it is a start.