My terminal setup is gnome-terminal + tmux + zsh with vi bindings.
In applications like vim or even in the zsh's command line vi editing mode, I need to frequently hit the ESC key but there is a small delay before the effects of this key take place. See GNU Screen makes Vim ESC key slow
After some experimentation, I found that hitting ESC key and immediately another key (say b) has the same effect as hitting Alt+b. I don't know why this is the case (probably for legacy reasons when there was no Alt? I don't know). Either way, I have two Alt keys and I don't want this behaviour with my ESC key. I have tried with C+[ and its the same problem with that too.
I'm not sure who is responsible for this, gnome-terminal or tmux or my OS itself (Ubuntu Natty). Any ideas on how to address this would be great.
Update: I checked without tmux on a different terminal (LXTerminal) and the delay is present there too.
Best Answer
Here's an actual fix. Add the following to
.tmux.conf
:As mentioned in the comments: The server may need to be restarted.
tmux kill-server
kills the server; you may need to restart it. Alternatively, you can reload the configuration file from the command prompt insidetmux
by typing your tmux prefix (default Ctrl+B) followed by : and enteringsource-file ~/.tmux.conf
.