🚀 go-pugleaf

Your idea sounds mostly sound, as long as such files stay on your
system, and don't go out to the net.  One reason I can think for using
ASCII graphic characters rather than escape sequences is that they can
have more mnemonic value; ANSI control codes are almost all pretty
arbitrary.  Remember, everyone who writes your text files is going to
have to know these sequences.  I also think that this form will be
easier to edit, since you will see the characters, not the effects
(although you indicated that you like seeing the effect as you edit).

I'm not sure I like your implementation scheme, though.  Rather than
modifying putc you should write a filter, and make all the programs do
their output through the filter.  Of course, you said you wanted to do
this without modifying any of the existing programs, so you are sort of
stuck with your idea.
-- 
			Barry Margolin
			ARPA: barmar@MIT-Multics
			UUCP: ..!genrad!mit-eddie!barmar