Hmm? Apart from the proportional text what would you lose? Even IBM line drawing characters should be able to simulate the scrollbars and dividing lines. Given a sufficiently high-resolution text mode, multiple columns should pose no problem, either.

Granted, I see no real reason for it, as you might as well hook the existing code into e.g. Linux' framebuffer mode, instead of porting it to curses. It would run over ssh, of course, but so does acme with X forwarding, and the best general solution would probably involve merging sam's client/server mode with acme.