How to parse text from a plain text file and use the result to highlight a PDF file

Back in 2010, some guy claimed to be capable of doing this:

http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=103847

"The Kindle stores its annotations in a Mobipocket (".mobi") file for each document and in one long text file named "My Clippings.txt." In this post I describe a system that synchronizes these annotations with PDF versions of the corresponding documents on a computer.

Overview

This system is embodied in an Applescript that parses the My Clippings file and controls the Skim PDF reader. The script first parses the clippings file. It then searches through the clippings and isolates any that come from documents on the kindle matching the filename of the currently open PDF file (the "pertinent clippings"). The script then iterates through each of the pertinent clippings, locating the matching text or location in the PDF document and applying highlights or adding notes where appropriate. The end result is an annotated, printable PDF document that matches the document on the kindle.

You can download the script here: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2541109/KindleClippings.scpt. Before running the script, be sure to change the value of MyEmail to match your sending address and to verify that the Kindle mount point defined in MyClippingsFile is correct. You'll also need the free Skim PDF Reader.

To use it, send or copy a document file to your kindle. Remember, the kindle supports RTF, DOC, TXT and other common text formats and it will convert them into MobiPocket files internally for easier reading. Make some notes. Then take the same document that you just sent to the kindle and convert it to a PDF, e.g. by using the print to PDF feature in Mac OS X. Be sure to keep the filename the same. Open that same PDF in Skim and run the script. The highlights and notes should appear in the PDF.

If you're interested in how this works, read more on my blog here: [not longer available]

Sadly, his script is no longer available, nor his blog.

Do you guys know if this is possible? I've been looking for this kind of functionality but can't find it anywhere.

Solution

This code, using python and PyMuPDF, works:

import fitz

# the document to annotate
doc = fitz.open("text_to_highlight.pdf")

# the text to be marked
text_list = [
    "first piece of text", 
    "second piece of text",
    "third piece of text"
        ]

for page in doc:
    for text in text_list:
        rl = page.search_for(text, quads = True)
        page.add_highlight_annot(rl)

# save to a new PDF
doc.save("text_annotated.pdf")

The original 'My Clippings.txt' should be manipulated somehow, stringr could work but I found more useful to manipulate the text with multiple selections in Sublime Text---the goal is to have a list of highlights in the form of text_list above.