Looking around for an easy way to create applications with text GUIs for running over SSH terminals I came across CHARVA. CHARVA’s API copies Swings, it unfortunately is not built on top of Swing but is a copy of Swing. This forces implementers to import classes in the charva.awt and charvax.swing packages instead of traditional awt and swing classes. However, the result is rather nice, at least if you’re looking to run applications off a server on a simple Point-of-Sale or Point-of-Service (POS) terminal that may not even support graphics.

In my case I’m looking into making a simple app that I can use to keep track of passwords, both when I’m at home (regular swing) and when I’m away (at work or similar) and only able to access the application via SSH (CHARVA).

For more info, check out CHARVA here: http://www.pitman.co.za/projects/charva/index.html