MacAplAlt keylayout - escape key displays eject symbol

Question

Does anyone here use the MacAplAlt keyboard layout from GNU APL? I've found that the escape key is mapped to the "eject" symbol (unicode 23CF). This is annoying, since in vi I use the escape key a lot. This is on macos Catalina 10.15.7 (old, I know).

This particular layout file is support-files/OS-X-Keyboard/MacAplAlt.keylayout.

Line 101 in MacAplAlt.keylayout has this:

                    <key code="53" output=""/>

I changed it to be a "real" escape:

                    <key code="53" output="&#x001B;"/>

Here's all the entries for that key location:

$ grep -n 53 MacApl*
101:            <key code="53" output=""/>
213:            <key code="53" output="quad question appears here"/>
324:            <key code="53" output="&#x001B;"/>
436:            <key code="53" output="&#x001B;"/>
547:            <key code="53" output="&#x001B;"/>
657:            <key code="53" output="&#x001B;"/>
768:            <key code="53" output="&#x001B;"/>
879:            <key code="53" output="&#x001B;"/>

For comparison, the DyalogAltUS.keylayout has 0x1B for all entries for that key.

So, my question: have other folks tweaked their keylayout too, or does it work correctly on other macos releases and is only a problem with this old hardware and os?

Thanks!