PDFMarkupAndNotesExtractor
Shell script, that extracts the markup and notes of PDFs using, Apple's "Preview" Application and AppleScript
This script uses "Preview" to extract the annotations and notes of pdf files into a text file Since there is no public API for extracting the annotations, it scraps them from the UI of "Preview"
NOTE: you will be asked to grand the "Terminal" the right to control your computer and you have to allow this in your systems settings
WARNING: For this reason, the script might have to be adapted for every future version of "Preview", until there will be a stable API for accessing the notes and markup.
Example
extracting annotations and markup:
pdf_extract_notes.sh Appeltauer_2012_ExtendingContextOrientedProgrammingToNewApplicationDomains.pdf
produces a: Appeltauer_2012_ExtendingContextOrientedProgrammingToNewApplicationDomains.note
Page: SEITE 1
Stamp: jens - 09.01.2014
Marked: Context-oriented Programming
Note: Malte’s Thesis
Page: SEITE 15
Stamp: jens - 09.01.2014
Marked: 1^MIntroduction
it can alo handle more files:
pdf_extract_notes.sh *.pdf
It will overwrite existing note files when the pdf is newer than the note file.
TODO
- The shell script replaces german relative words "Ich", "Heute", "Gestern" but not the english ones...
- The color / type of the annotation is not extracted
Related Work
Apple Automator allows to extract the annotations of a PDF, but it only gives you your own note and the position and color of the annation, but not the actual content of what you marked. This limitation might be due to copyright reasons, but this is not clear.
Skim, a PDF annotation programm, provides similar extraction facilities, but only for notes taken with itself. It allows to convert existing annotations from "Preview", but the converted annotations do not contain the marked up text.
There is a nice skim based workflow http://hackademic.postach.io/export-all-skim-notes-directly-to-evernote that also exports the annotations to evernote.
Copyright
under MIT License (MIT) Copyright (c) 2014 Jens Lincke