Swap TAB and Escape in all modes including evil

Question

Escape is too far away on modern keyboards and Tab could be easily typed as Ctrl+i in terminal applications. So I found it convenient to replace them in my alacritty terminal key bindings. I am used to these replacements and want them for Emacs also. What should I do, to replace Esc with Tab and vice versa in all buffers, modes, context etc allover Emacs(including evil-mode ofc)?

I've tried this in my init.el

(define-key input-decode-map [tab] [?\e])
(define-key input-decode-map [escape] [?\t])

But this doesn't trigger insert-to-normal transition in evil mode: I am pressing tab, I am seeng ESC ESC ESC in bottom bar, but evil state remains <I>.

Answer 1

If I understand you correctly, most importantly, you would like <tab> to work as <escape> in various "evil states". With emacs, the way I see it, you are offered with more freedom than merely "switching" these two key strokes.

To rebind <tab> for common evil states, you can first checkout with C-h k <escape> while under different states, to see the originally bound functions. I'll list each of them below:

(evil-global-set-key 'insert (kbd "<tab>") 'evil-normal-state)
(evil-global-set-key 'replace (kbd "<tab>") 'evil-normal-state)
(evil-global-set-key 'normal (kbd "<tab>") 'evil-force-normal-state)
(evil-global-set-key 'visual (kbd "<tab>") 'evil-exit-visual-state)

NOTE: For other states like operator or motion, it's not quite relevant here. Also for operator state for instance, C-g works perfectly.

If you want buffer local behavior instead of global (or special behavior in particular buffers, major modes, etc.), you can switch to evil-local-set-key for more precise keybindings.

You can do the same for (kbd "<escape>"), and rebind to literally anything you want for each state.

See what I mean by "freedom" in emacs. Hope this is what you expect. My whole point is instead of switching ESC and TAB completely, do whatever makes the most sense for your workflow.