title: Create a countdown dialog menu box for a linux terminal?
body: <p>How do I make a dialog widget for the Linux Console (not X, but the "terminal" console) that would show a countdown in seconds next to a widget that might be a menu list or a textbox?</p>
  
  <p>Ideally this might be a standalone program, like dialog, that is supplied parameters to control its behaviour.  </p>
  
  <p>When the countdown reaches 0, the selected value of the widget is returned. There could be a default value in case no human is present (or the human prefers the default).  The boot loaders like grub and lilo can do this already, pretty much.  I looked through the dialog man page and couldn't find this feature set.  </p>
  
  <p>Tried so far:</p>
  
  <p><code>dialog --timeout 30 --menu 'Menu Title' 20 60 3 'A' 'Choose A' 'B' 'Choose B' 'C' 'Choose C'</code> is close, but it doesn't show the 30 second timer ticking down.</p>
  
  <p><code>dialog --pause 'Hurry!' 10 60 30 --</code> shows a message and ok/cancel with the timer running but is only interstitial and not for user input.</p>
  
  <p>It is possible to combine multiple lines like this:</p>
  
  <pre><code>dialog --menu 'Menu Title' 10 60 3 'A' 'Choose A' 'B' 'Choose B' 'C' 'Choose C' --pause 'Hurry up' 10 60 30 
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>but that shows the widgets sequentially instead of combined on one page. Here, after the menu is answered with no timer, you get a message with a timer.</p>