I add the Heisig keywords to most of my flashcards. I have a Python script that can be run from the command line, as well as a web version. You can try out the web version here:

http://www.reavesmd.com/cgi-bin/heisig.cgi

I apologize in advance for the user interface, which is essentially nonexistent. 

If you're comfortable with the command line, I'll be glad to share the other version of the script, which can be useful for adding a Heisig column to spreadsheets before importing them into Anki.

What would be even better would be an Anki plugin to automatically generate a Heisig keyword field, similar to the way the reading generation works....

Last edited by jreaves (2009 June 02, 9:04 pm)

Here's the script. You'll need Python installed on your system. Paste the script into a text file, edit the path for the Heisig data file, make the script executable, and give it a run. I believe I got the Heisig file through the Anki website. I may have downloaded the Heisig Anki database and exported to get the text file. Anyway, if you have trouble with that, e-mail me and I'll send you a copy. It's too big to paste here.

#!/usr/bin/python
# Usage: Search column 3 of inputfile for kanji. Rewrite each line in inputfile to the screen with an additional Heisig field at the end.
# inputfile is assumed to be tab-separated and UTF-8 encoded.
#
# ./addheisig.py inputfile 2 > outputfile # Column numbering starts with 0
#
# Same as above, but format the output with just the keywords, not the kanji.
#
# ./addheisig.py inputfile 2 -k > outputfile
#
import sys, codecs

RTK        = 'heisig-data-2.txt' # Change this path/file name for your system
file        = codecs.open(sys.argv[1], 'r', encoding='utf-8')
col        = sys.argv[2] # Column in the input file where we look for kanji

keywords_only = False
if len(sys.argv) > 3 and sys.argv[3] == '-k':
    keywords_only = True

for line in file:
    searched = []
    heisig = []
    parts = line.split('\t')

    for ch in parts[int(col)]:
        if ord(ch) >= 0x4E00 and ord(ch) <= 0x9FBF and ch not in searched:
            searched.append(ch)
            rtk = codecs.open(RTK, 'r', encoding='utf-8')
       
            for entry in rtk:
                rtkparts = entry.split('\t')
                if rtkparts[0] == ch:
                    if keywords_only:
                        heisig.append(rtkparts[1])
                    else:
                        heisig.append(rtkparts[0] + '-' + rtkparts[1])
                    break
            rtk.close()

    print line.strip().encode('utf-8'),
    print '\t'.encode('utf-8'),

    if len(heisig) != 0:
        # Oddly, if these lines are combined into one, the output cannot be redirected to a file.
        h = ', '.join(heisig)
        print h.encode('utf-8'),
    else:
        print " ".encode('utf-8'),
    print ''
   
file.close()
sys.exit(0)

Last edited by jreaves (2009 June 02, 11:09 pm)