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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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 ref’ Edit ref 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 changed by the useredited.
Locking of reference text in the Editor
In earlier versions of Lawmaker, it was possible to type over or edit the text of x-refs in the Editor. In version 17, it is no longer possible to do this. This restriction has been introduced in order to reduce the likelihood of users inadvertently creating discrepancies between the text of the reference and the information associated with that reference - i.e. the information about the target of provision which the reference links to, whether that be an internal or external reference.
This should help to make other Lawmaker features more robust and reliable. Prior to this change, it was easy possible to create a reference to a specific section of a Bill (e.g. “section 5”), then type somewhere in that the text of the reference in order to change it (e.g. “sections 5 or 7”), while leaving the associated target information unchanged. This created problems with the “Update x-refs” function later on.
Edit ref modal
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 ref modal. You can open this from the floating toolbar which appears when you double-click a reference, or from the right-click menu.
The first field in the modal ('Reference text') is the text of the reference as it appears in the bill; textual the other fields contain the background reference information associated with the reference - these fields can be ignored by most users. Textual changes can be made here. Alternativelyin the ‘Reference text’ field.
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If you don’t want to use the new Edit ref 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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All functions relating to x-refs are now accessible from a floating toolbar which appears when you double-click on a reference in the Editor. Many of the functions on this toolbar were present in earlier versions of Lawmaker, and available from mostly on the right-click menu, but some are new - for example, “Go to ref”, which takes you to the target of the reference . (see https://lawmaker.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/USERMANUAL/pages/500203522/References#How-to-view-the-target-of-a-reference).
The right-click menu still contains the same x-ref functions as before, along with some new ones, like Edit ref; the floating toolbar is another way of accessing the same functionality.
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The ‘Update references’ function 
has not been changed in version 17. It is still possible to update the text of internal cross-references using ‘update references’ - the presence of external references in a document should have no effect on this functionality.
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This is because the XML tags which represent internal and external references are largely the same as they were in previous Lawmaker releases - all that has changed is the information stored in those tags. As a result, auto-application of amendments should work as before, and the presence of external references in a bill should not prevent amendments from applying.
Appearance and formatting of PDFs
The appearance of x-refs in generated PDFs is unchanged from previous Lawmaker versions. There is nothing to distinguish them visually from the other text in a Bill or SI - they are rendered according to whether they are in the body of a document or a heading, using the existing rules for rendering text in those locations, and will therefore appear the same as text which is not contained in x-ref tags.
Note that hyperlinks are added to x-refs in generated PDFs, as in previous Lawmaker version: this means that internal x-refs in a generated PDF will function as a link which takes you to the relevant page of the PDF, while external x-refs function as a link which takes you to the relevant page of legislation.gov.uk.