The BBS Project

ppp service could be provided by the standard pppd. Web browsers could be in the form of lynx or w3m.

I was also thinking of a Mozilla/Firefox addon as an interface in order to provide a view that has a system-native appearance. (Looks like XP under XP, looks like GTK under Linux, etc.)

Under the Linux console, the choice between ANSI or xterm (or VT100 or VT320) is typically handled by by the curses library. A set of instructions including text placement and coloring is provided that is automatically translated to whatever the connecting terminal supports.