Yes, it would. Basically it allows you to do screen control and the output depends on the TERM environment variable.
Or, we can interface to curses, which is a higher-level API, providing calls such as "goto position", "create window [rectanguar work area] here", etc. The benefit of curses is that it keeps track of the content of the screen, making things like repaint both optimised and simple. Ther API for curses can be found here:
http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/7908799/xcurses/curses.h.html
As for implementation, creating an APL API for terminfo is obviously easier. Much less thinking involved. :-)
Regards,
Elias