Some compare&contrast would be a nice introduction for those who know one but not the other (like me).
EDIT: it looks like this one really doesn't use ncurses at all relying instead on terminal escape codes: https://github.com/gavinlaking/vedeu/blob/master/lib/vedeu/s...
Urwid can use that too, but has a few other display backends: http://urwid.org/reference/display_modules.html#module-urwid...
Urwid is also MUCH older (first Changelog item from 2004).
Of course, Urwid is still Python, so it may not be a good fit if you absolutely need a Ruby library.