As a somewhat new KStars/Ekos user, I find myself often trying to get the Ekos GUI out of the way of KStars, especially when using VNC for Raspberry Pi. The Ekos GUI is large, with large fonts (which is good when you want it, but not when you don't). It would be nice to be able to minimize the Ekos GUI via top right window control "minus" symbol. Is there a reason why this window control is not implemented?

Also, I seem to be finding odd ways to accidentally minimize the logging output (bottom of GUI). When this happens, I struggle to find how to get those lines back. I think this might have something to do with having resized the GUI (making it smaller). I'm using VNC to Rpi4, so real estate on the display is precious (currently shows only 1280x1084, although my laptop is much higher resolution). If there's a way to minimize the Ekos display like for the Indi GUI (which can be minimized and brought back up when desired), I would be appreciative of knowing how to do this. Thanks!

Sorry, I figured out that the Ekos toggle button effectively achieves what I was looking for (minimize Ekos window). Now if someone has an answer to the question about how to get the log lines back on the bottom of the display after they are removed/minimized, that would be helpful.

In the options you can set EKOS and INDI control panels to be independent windows. Each of which has their own independent setting. That will allow you to minimize them individually, and even more them to a second desktop.
You can also explore hotkeys to pull it up and down quickly.

Ctrl-k works nice to open/close Ekos and Ctrl-i work for the INDI window. I have not found a way to lose the lower portion of the screen as you describe. The dividing bar remained visible and responsive when I tried it.

Thanks for the tips on Ctrl keys (both responders). On the issue of lower screen lines lost, I don't lose the dividing bar, but it's often unresponsive when I get it in that state. I think it might have something to do with having reduced the GUI size to minimum. In my experience, both the divider, and especially the right arrow resize GUI control, are really difficult to use. I suspect it's a screen pixel region sensitivity issue (overly tight). Tricky to get just the right position to allow the control to work. Not sure if VNC is also complicating it, but I'll explore this a bit more. In either case, I can work around it...more of a nuisance than a serious issue. Now that I know how to minimize/restore the GUI, I can keep it larger and maybe the whole issue is moot.

I can confirm the problem with the dividing bar at the bottom. I don't know what exactly triggers it, but whenever it gets too small, and I then try to enlarge it again, it collapses completely. The only way to see the log then is to grab the handle and pull it more than halfway up the window. At that point the window will switch ENTIRELY to now show the log portion only. To get the EKOS GUI back, I now have to grab the handle on the top and again pull it down >50 % towards the bottom. At that point, the window will switch over again ENTIRELY to the GUI, without showing any log portion.

The only way to get out of this again is to quit KStars entirely and restart.

I meant to leave a comment to that effect a few times already, but always found it too hard to explain and I never explored systematically how to trigger this behavior. However, now that someone else has brought this up, I want to second the need/desire to fix that issue. It can become very inconvenient in the middle of an observation session.

Yes, you can make the output window larger, it is actually quite simple. You need to modify the config.txt file accordingly:

www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/configuration/config-txt/

Two things to do:

1) set the 'hdmi_force_hotplug=1' flag. That forces your Pi4 to output a video signal even if no monitor is attached, as when you are using it with VNC only.

2) set the framebuffer values in the config.txt file to 1920x1080 (or whatever your monitor size is). You can achieve the same by adding a new startup command: xrandr --fb 1920x1080 or using the terminal to issue that command.

Jo

The full collapse is normal behavior and I can get the window down to 3 lines of text before that happens. Returning from the collapsed state is also not an issue for me as it returns once I've pulled the handle back up by about 3 lines of text worth of space.
I am running the latest nightly build as of a couple nights ago.

I use two desktops on my set up, and INdI will move to one no problem, but if I try and move ekos to a desktop of its own, it takes the whole of Kstars with it, it does not seem as if they can be separated, I would like to have Kstars planetarium page on its own desktop and INdI and ekos control panels on another...!!

EKOS can be separated. There is a toggle box in the options section for EKOS called Independent Window.

This is the checkbox to be toggled:

Hi,
I had the same problems with VNC, the screen resolution is set to 1920x1080 but it seems smaller...

I would suggest to try "remote desktop connection", here it works perfectly with my Pi4.
I installed "xrpd" in the Pi4 and "Remmina" as the client in my PC, as explained in this page:
raspberrytips.com/remote-desktop-raspberry-pi/

I add a screenshot, my PC has a 1920x1068 screen resolution, the Pi4 has 2880x1620

I hope this helps !