Tsar_of_Cows

I've set myself the task to, over the summer, write a text based game.

I have a pretty decent idea of what the backend is going to look like, but I intend to have a text based interface, which looks something like 3 linux shell windows open at once.

I'm aiming for the look and feel of a command line enviroment, with basically 3 command line boxes, one of which is a sort of narration box containing current tasks, the second of which is for recording the player's notes, and the third of which is for progressing in the game by typing commands and making choices.

Now I could throw this together in Java, but there are a few things I really want that I either don't know how to do in Java or I don't think the basic Swing libraries have that capability:

• I want it to really look like an old command line: white terminal font on black.
• I want it to come up full screen, rather than windowed on the desktop. I'm not sure that the bog standard JPanel has that ability.

So I was wondering two basic things:
1: Does anyone know of any Java Libraries that can do this convincingly?
2: Would I be better off doing this in C/C++?

I ask the second question because the Java interfaces (or the classes I've worked with to make them) have a tendency to look really flashy and garish no matter what you do - I want the exact opposite: clunky and basic!

If I would be better off working in C++ it then becomes a question of which IDE (I'll need an IDE that suggests possible methods as I have zero experience in C [except for programming lego robots], and preferably one with a nice and easy drag'n'drop style visual GUI builder. There are quite a few out there and I don't really know what's good or bad about them, so I'm hoping for personal preferences/experiences, and it is utterly essential that the IDE is a free one (Tsar.setCheapskate(1); )!

I also then need to know what libraries I'll need to get my hands on, basically because I've only used C for programming some afore mentioned lego robots in Interactive C, so I don't know what C/C++ normlly comes with vs. what I'll need for my needs (complicated cmd line interfaces, basic I/O text file handeling, and some number crunching but nothing fancy).