Script to export all Skim notes in a Markdown document.
This script, when called from an open Skim document, generates a text file (in a "notes" directory) with all the notes. Highlights are treated as quotes and so are preceded with >. Text and anchored notes are copied verbatim. The formatted output is something like:
---
title: <title>
author: <name>
date: <today's date>
tags: <tag list>
---
Page 1:
> <highlight on page 1>
Page 2:
> <highlight on page 2>
Page 10:
<Note on page 10>
...
A Pandoc YAML metadata block is prepended to the document. The title is taken from the PDF file name, with Notes prepended. This is also used for the Markdown file name, which also has a zettel ID in the front. For instance, a PDF named "AppleScript Guide.pdf" will generate a file called "20150901084420 Notes AppleScript Guide.md". The digits represent a time stamp in a format YYYYMMDDhhmmss.
Right now, to modify any of the settings, you would have to modify the script itself, which is quite readable.
To mantain a version to be tracked in a dedicated folder and "install" the script, clone this repository and type make install (assuming you have make installed); all it does is to compile the script and place the compiled version at ~/Library/Scripts/Applications/Skim. If you wish, you can just drop the text script in this folder.
For accessing the scripts, I like FastScripts. You can also create a service in Automator, or use a macro or launcher program.
Keep in mind that this is a early stage of the script. I've run it through some PDF files and I got what I wanted
I'm having a hard time dealing with foreign characters, mainly because of my limited experience with AppleScript and the fact that Skim notes can have rich text. Since each note/highlight follows a page number, if it seems that there is a wrong characters, you can check in the document.