Suggestions for *nix framework to write a menu interface

I am going to write a full-screen menu interface to run on Linux and *BSD whic开发者_高级运维h is controllable primarily by a game pad and wanted suggestions for a language/framework that is well suited to this problem. Each menu item will launch an external program.

It would preferably be easily theme-able, and load menu data from text files, perhaps in the form itemName: "command -to -execute".

For example: Python + PyQT

Qt for Embedded Linux is a good framework, but it's a bit lower level than a canned menu-of-external-commands that you seem to be looking for.

What you're describing sounds very similar to MythTV's menus. You might see how they do it (or even borrow their code, if their license is compatible with yours and if their design is modular enough).

I used pygame for a interface that runs fullscreen in framebuffermode and is controllable only using cursor keys

There are also wrappers for ruby, c++, ... if python doesn't suit you well

Alternately, Python + PyGTK should work well.