Affinity Cat tool misbehaves it self

[Harja Blok]

Dear cat lovers of Affinity Publisher Beta, 

This comment is about the cat tool in Affinity Publisher Public Beta 1.7.0.249 (under Windows 10 Home 1809; 8 Gb RAM)

It was a great and joyful surprise to discover the cat tool – just on my birthday !  (I’m from 1945) 

However, the tool is a rather hidden affair and has an elusive attitude. The help function says about the cat tool: “To use the Cat shape tool, you must hold the Alt key as you open the Shapes flyout. Affinity Cat will be available in the list.” It doesn’t. Pressing the Alt key (left) and the shapes fly-out simultaneously results in a fly out and a fly in of the list of shapes within 1/10 of a second but no cat tool.

I managed to put the tool separately into the toolbar and assigned a key stroke to it, but that doesn’t work either (I choose Q but other characters failed as well). Pressing the Affinity Cat pictogram shows the key stroke but the program itself does not obey. I can live with the workaround but the tool is now embarrassingly public to be seen. 

I consider the whole case rather disappointing, but maybe it is me myself to be blamed as we do have around our house a so called LAT-cat. The animal (a stray one) came this summer and I fed it with ham and bacon and since then it comes every day in the window sill and looks very accusingly into our living room until we feed it once more. It disappears after the meal in the great open to come forward the next day for its daily meal. Hence the LAT-prefix (live apart together). Some people (not the cat) think my behavior crude.

If I change my attitude towards the animal should the cat tool in Affinity Publisher will work like the suggestion in the help file? You gentlemen, self declared cat lovers, should have an idea about it.

Let it know the Publisher Beta community in general and me in particular.

Met vriendelijke groet:
Harja Blok
The Netherlands

Edited March 9, 2019 by Harja Blok
removed address

[Alfred]

Welcome to the Serif Affinity Forums, Harja, and happy birthday! 

In the Windows versions of the Affinity apps, you need to hold down the Shift key, not the Alt key, to reveal the Cat Tool in the toolbar flyout. I don’t know why the custom Q shortcut doesn’t work for you: I’ve just set up the same shortcut here, and it works as expected.

By the way, you might want to consider removing your address from your post to this public forum.

[walt.farrell]

4 minutes ago, Alfred said:

In the Windows versions of the Affinity apps, you need to hold down the Shift key, not the Alt key, to reveal the Cat Tool in the toolbar flyout.

Right. That seems to be a bug in the Help file for Windows, which perhaps the Serif documentation team will fix now that it's been mentioned

[Jon P]

As Alfred and Walt have stated, it is a bug in the documentation and should be the shift key.

I've reported this to the documentation team, thanks!