Text-Terminal-HOWTO from faqs.org + “Linux Internals” gold mines!
ha ha, hit the goldmine (oldmine?)!!
Has ALL the info you asked for.
Text-Terminal-HOWTO
by David S. Lawyer
(v1.36, August 2004)
Just 119 pages. 
) The thing with UNIX is : you gotta know the history to know why things work(?) the way they do.
========= And another : “Linux Internals” =========
Linux Internals
by Simone Demblon
The whole book as one HTML : http://learnlinux.tsf.org.za/courses/build/internals/internals-all.html
Chapter 3 has a whole section on Terminal Emulation.
Excerpt:
1978 Bill Joy creates “the “vi” editor a full screen editor, and at the same
time he sees the need “to optimize the code for several different types of
terminals, he decided to consolidate screen management by using an interpreter
to redraw the screen. The interpreter was driven by the terminal’s
characteristics – termcap was born,”. P Sulcas
