(unknown)

[Tennyson Bardwell <tennysontaylorbardwell@gmail.com>]

*tl;dr: <esc> converted to meta-prefix during a freeze (spacemacs)*

*Symptoms*
I have an annoying problem, but I think I know what's going on. <esc>[1]
followed by keys like <j> get converted into <M-j> when they arrive at
emacs during a freeze. Practically, my habit of `saving => esc => movement`
causes emacs to freeze for 200-500ms frequently, followed by some random
command happening, causing me a decent amount of problems.

*Environment*
I'm using spacemacs via GUI on a Mac M1[2]. I don't think this is
environment specific, however. I believe I can replicate this in the CLI
vis emacsclient and across versions of emacs.

*Attempted Solution*
I did try to set `meta-prefix-char` from `27` (esc) to `nil` but then I had
weird behavior, like <M-:> stopped working (it was converted to <ESC :>).
It seemed like there was enough odd behavior that I abandoned this route.

*Request*
If anyone has any more information about this (or has intuition) please let
me know. I got the sense that this issue only really affects people in
evil-mode, and that setting meta-prefix-char to nil was a bad idea.

[1]
I press escape via [ C-[ ] on my laptop

[2]
MacOS 14.2.1 on an M1
GNU Emacs 29.2 (build 1, aarch64-apple-darwin21.6.0, NS appkit-2113.60
Version 12.6.6 (Build 21G646)) of 2024-01-18 (homebrew)
spacemacs ffebed03d2d21b8f9b1cbb173656c2fe073f6a7f