extracting strings from terminfo

[perryh at pluto.rain.com]

I have a C program which currently does not use any terminal control
facilities.  I don't want to make it into a full-screen application,
or anything close, but I would like to extract the bold and sgr0
terminfo strings (or the md and me termcap strings, if on a system
too ancient to have terminfo) so as to render the occasional word in
bold.

What is the best way to go about this?  Everything I've found so
far is written from the perspective of either writing termcap/info
entries for new terminal types, or writing full-screen applications.