The sliders in Script-Fu scripts look like this:
whereas the ones in python plugins look like this:
Is it possible to have the script-fu outcome in python plug-ins as well?
They look so much nicer and are much easier on the eyes.
Of course, as it is the sliders would be much better as Script-fu shows it - but it also shows a deeper problem: current GIMP dark theme (I guess it is the default) is simply unusable as it is.
It is not just “Python sliders” - but everywhere on the intterface there is this “black over black” which may have looked elegant in the theme author monitor, with their specific callibartion and their eye-sigut - but it is just plain, flat black with no visible limits for slider value or even control areas or otherwise.
A general problem of today’s “elegant”, “modern” interfaces:
No contrast, no borders, no shadows …
But rounded corners!
Back to my original question …
Any way to get those nice sliders in python plug-ins?
Nelo, I think the ones that you like are the ScaleEntry widgets that you get if you specify those instead of SpinScale. Is it just that the defaults are set up differently for ScriptFu? The default for Pyhohn is LabelSpin
JimDee2
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Indeed that’s it.
Thanks so much.
These look so much nicer and are easier to see.
I think it is as @gwidion says, which is that everything looks better with a bit of color… except that my conclusion is not that neutral gray themes are unusable. I know it for a fact, since we use them for work without any problem every working hour of every work day of the week, all year long. 
Now it’s not about being “elegant”. The role of our neutral-gray themes is to not “get in the way”. There is this whole thing about graphic works, when it comes to color, is that you want everything, but the image you are touching, to be neutral grays, in order not to pollute your perception of colors. You may look up the topic in a web engine. It’s quite well documented.
Now ideally, the best is normally even the mid-gray theme, though for most people, this is a bit too hardcore (especially doing good contrast is a bit hard there). At the minimum, some either light or dark neutral gray theme is the next best thing (i.e. no tinted gray, and even less colorful elements).
This is why we choose some dark neutral gray as a default (while providing a light and mid-gray variants). It seems like the best compromise.
It’s like when people in the industry build color-grading rooms (look it up too, there are even articles nowadays for people doing this at home as I guess remote working and freelancers become a bigger thing). Nobody is saying it’s “elegant” or “modern” to have a room with mid-gray painted walls and no windows (that’s a setup to get depressed! lol). It’s just for the work.
Now we would definitely welcome shipping a colorful theme variant additionally to the current ones. The reason it doesn’t exist is only that nobody contributing this. In fact, nobody new even contributed our current themes and I had to start them a few years ago (fortunately nowadays, some people took the relay, in particular @CmykStudent who does an excellent job!). And the fact is that if we have to choose only one (by lack of contributors), then it has to be the neutral gray themes which are suited for color work (because GIMP is a graphic-editing/creation software after all). Anyone wants a color theme can contribute something (on the current theme base, where we can just create a new theme by choosing some colors, don’t do something completely different which means a whole new maintenance hell).
By the way @CmykStudent, if the sliders above show up with blue in our default theme, it means there is a theme leak somewhere, still. This should not happen. It should be fixed. 
@Jehan Sure, I’ll try to replicate and then fix.
As for themes, i think once gimp 3 is out we can start encouraging theme development - there are a ton of gimp 2.10 themes on deviantart for example, and elsewhere.
Changing the appearance of sliders in python plug-ins that are shipped with GIMP 3 would presumably affect the documentation (as would changes in layout), with implications for translation.
I believe my wording is quite clear- I won’t have, due to reasons you mentioned, a problem with neutral gray colors.
The problem with the current dark theme is that it shows on my devices and to my eyes as colors I will categorize as stright-out “black”, not “gray”. But of course, a lighter theme with the same perceived lack of contrast would be equaly unusable.
I can only imagine the current theme was arrived at by one worked with a somewhat medium-to-high-end HDR capable device and the person themselves has a quite good vision.
I too a picture with my mobile of the screenshot on the O.P. here as it appears on my screen - I tried to turn off all mobile camera auto-corrections - the blue tint got exaggerated due to my color temperature setting, but otherwise, the details I can’t see inside the dialog are as depicted here.
No idea what type of screens were used. However, my own eyesight isn’t the greatest anymore and I checked on the screen I use for my arm devkit.
This is an old display 1360x768, 8-bit bit depth that doesn’t support HDR. When I look at the screenshot of the OP I can see the contrast without problem. Of course that doesn’t help you with your device. Just to say that there may be other factors involved too. Maybe the contrast setting of your screen is not optimal?
Definitely. I hope we’ll have a lot of great third-party themes. In fact, the future I envision for GIMP makes third-party extensions “first class citizens”.
Back 20 or 30 years ago, many of the extensions which were created (plug-ins, themes, icons, brushes…) would make it to core GIMP. But this is not possible anymore (unless we want to make GIMP into a Frankenstein software). What must happen instead is to make it a very cool platform for people creating then distributing their extensions and for people to be able to search, find and install these extensions as smoothly as possible, so that anyone’s tastes, needs or specific use cases could be catered for. That’s still not completely there, but that’s the plan. 
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I’d very much like to see an image of a “non-problematic” display of black over black.
This is a somewhat midle-ground display - more to the high-end, but not the “professional” stuff - a 32’’ 4K LG - - the contrast on the monitor OSD is set to close to 100%, and thanks to Wayland I have no software control of any settings.
Of course, it is not as bad as on this photo - I didn’t fiddle with the picture, and the auto-exposure picked the surrounding white - but it is quite hard for me to devise the value and the widget area on the OP image. _it is not feasible “at a glance” - I have to stop whatever I am doing, and focus really hard to be able to actually see the bar. That is not the idea I have of an UI, and I wonder if one just fancied that because it looks like new modern Microsoft stuff. (which is also unusable)
Of course, it may be a problem with my own vision accuracy. But I suspect it should affect a lot of people.
I mean - I think it is quite clear the current “dark theme” is a no go for a lot of people. Would it be that hard to add some non-trivial amount of contrast now, so stuff are usable for everyone, even if for those with perfect vision it looks “not so elegant and refined”? An “extra dark” theme could be added for whoever prefer that, but that one wouldn’t need to be the default.
Well I definitely don’t have one of these fancy professional displays either, more like a middle-end one (or even low-end when I watch directly on the laptop screen). And I don’t have extremely bad vision, yet never use my glasses when working on the computer (which means worse vision that someone using their glasses with full correction). Yet I don’t have any problem seeing the sliders.
Now your photo is definitely horrible. If that’s really what it looks to you, it’s bad. But I’d think there is something wrong with your screen at this point!
In any case, we welcome CSS patches as merge requests to improve the contrast. You know how to contribute to GIMP. 
Maybe. Though it is actually the first time someone reports such a problem. We have people not fond of the dark themes, or neutral-gray themes, and such. But we never had anyone telling us the contrast on this widget was making it completely unreadable (AFAICR).
Again, it’s really not the point of our current themes. If we wanted to do this, we’d add some colors, some tint to the grays, and so on.
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