terminal escapes in Info files?

[karl@freefriends.org (Karl Berry)]

Dear Emacs developers,

Alper Ersoy (GTK developer, cc'd here) suggested to me that we enhance
Info format by allowing terminal escapes.  For example, @strong{this is
bold} in the Texinfo source could then end up getting displayed in
standout mode.

I can imagine two ways to implement this:
1) write ANSI terminal escape codes directly in the Info file.  (Even on
non-ANSI terminals, if there are any left, these could be translated to
appropriate termcap sequence.)

2) use the mechanism we created for @image to write a generic command in
the Info file, something like
      ^H^[display bold^H^]this is bold^H^[end display^H^]

In either case, the escapes would only be enabled with an option to
makeinfo for now, to provide for a phase-in period.

So here are my questions:
- what do you-all think of the idea in general?

- is one of (1) or (2) significantly easier to implement in Emacs?
  (2) is already implemented in standalone Info, via the --raw-escapes
  option, but this is not a determining factor in my mind.
  
  I know that Emacs's terminal-mode will interpret terminal escapes, but
  I don't know how easily that (or any other such support) can be
  integrated into info read.

- would anyone like to volunteer to implement this for Emacs :)?
  Neither Alper nor I can do it.  We can handle the makeinfo/standalone
  info changes, of course.

Thanks,
karl


P.S. Here are some references, FWIW:

- A list of escapes:
  http://www.isthe.com/chongo/tech/comp/ansi_escapes.html

- Documentation on using escapes in bash prompts:
  http://www.linux.org/docs/ldp/howto/Bash-Prompt-HOWTO/c341.html

- ANSI support in various terminals:
  http://search.cpan.org/~rra/ANSIColor-1.07/ANSIColor.pm#NOTES