[caf]

I've considered before that you could allow each end of a pipe to set name/value attributes, which can be read by the other end.

[cryptonector]

And now you're reinventing the Windows Console API... :)

I mean, both approaches have their pluses, but the API approach is only ever going to work well for remoting if it is standardized and interoperable. And the installed base of Unix termcap/terminfo programs is huge, so plain old text-with-in-band-controls is not going away anytime soon.

[caf]

With things like SIGWINCH / ioctl(TIOCGWINSZ) we already know what kind of API it is, we are just haggling about the price.