TIP 1: If you want to know the size of the main (default) ncurses screen, you can use the defined constant STDSCR
eg. ncurses_getmaxyx (STDSCR, $Height, $Width);
No need to create a window, get its size and delete it again (not sure if this works on php versions < 5 though).
TIP 2 : If you are creating a PHP console application and want to support terminal resizing and if you find that the ncurses screen doesn't actually resize when you resize your terminal (which was the case for me (on FreeBSD 5.3 at least)) you should end the current ncurses session and restart it again. Very easy to do this if you create your own ncurses class with a nice con- and destructor.