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Version 17 includes several improvements to Lawmaker’s referencing tools which extend the x-ref functionality already present in the application. These enhancements should help to improve the quality of references created in Bills and SIs, while also making it easier for Lawmaker users to manage and update the references in their document.

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Because Lawmaker now supports internal and external references in documents (and to address some accessibility concerns), the visual representation of these references has changed. Previously, x-refs were shown in light orange text. From version 17, x-refs display differently:

  • External references now show in blue in the Editor.

  • Internal references now show in purple in the Editor.

There are some other smaller presentational changes to references in the Editor. If an x-ref tag already exists in a document and the target of this reference is changed as a result of the automatic “Tag references” function, the changed reference will be shown in dark red. There will also be a corresponding document check warning reminding you to check this reference, because its target (i.e. the thing it links to, either within the current document or on legislation.gov.uk) has changed as a result of the automatic tagging operation.

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The other important visual change is to the appearance of x-refs which you have manually edited using the new Edit refreference modal (see https://lawmaker.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/USERMANUAL/pages/500203522/References#How-to-edit-references ). Whenever you change the text or target of a reference using the new modal, it will appear with double-underlining in the Editor. This is a visual aid to help highlight those references which have been editedmanually adjusted.

Locking of reference text in the Editor

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If you do need to edit the text of a reference to make a minor change to the reference text, e.g. to adjust the capitalisation of the word “section”, you can now do this using the new Edit refreference modal. You can open this from the floating toolbar which appears when you double-click a reference, or from the right-click menu.

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If you don’t want to use the new Edit refreference modal to make changes to an x-ref, you can instead Remove the x-ref tagging from a specific reference by right-clicking on it and selecting ‘Remove reference tag’, or from the floating toolbar. You can then re-type it in the desired format, and re-tag it by selecting it and clicking the “Tag x-refs” button in the toolbar.

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The right-click menu still contains the same x-ref functions as before, along with some new ones, like Edit refreference; the floating toolbar is another way of accessing the same functionality.

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Amendment lists

Automatic tagging of internal references does not work in the context of amendments lists, as before. Internal references to a bill provision can still be copied from a bill version and pasted into the text of an amendment in a list. This is existing functionality and remains unchanged from previous versions.

(There is no prohibition on external references appearing in amendments, but these are unlikely to occur until the automatic tagging function has been enhanced to work on amendment lists.)External references can appear within inserted content in an amendment in the same way that internal references can at present, but as the mark-up is the same for both, this will have no effect on any existing amendment list functionality. Such references are also very unlikely to appear initially until drafters take advantage of Tag references functionality when drafting amendments.

None of the changes in referencing functionality will affect the production of PDFs of amendment lists because references are not formatted in any special way in PDFs.

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