Cross references can be created via the Structure View in Lawmaker or using the Tag x-refs feature. In both cases, Lawmaker will create a reference to the target provision so that if it were to change changes, e.g. through renumbering, promotion, demotion or deletion, the system will can detect these changes the change and either update the reference to show the changes change or flag that the reference has become invalid.
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Tag x-ref relies on sophisticated pattern recognition but there may be some references that it doesn’t recognise. It may also tag something as a reference when it isn’t. We’re constantly refining this feature so please provide feedback to Lawmaker Support if you come across any issues. External cross-references (i.e. references to other enactments) are ignored by Tag x-refs when recognised as such. Tag-x-ref will skip over quoted structures because there is not enough context in a quoted structure to reliably identify the target of any cross-references within it. It also skips the introducing text before the quoted structure on the assumption that any references there will be external references. |
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Right-click on the provision in the Structure view you want to refer to (you may want to turn on full-depth mode to see all provisions - see Using the structure view).
From the context menu that appears, select the reference you want to copy from the Select x-ref to copy sub-menu. The menu will show all the different options for referring to the provision so you can select whether or not you want the provision name (e.g. “section”) to be included and whether any ancestor provisions should be included in the reference.
This will place the selected cross-reference in the clipboard.
Place To insert the reference, place your cursor in the Editor where you would like the cross reference to be inserted .Press and press Ctrl+v to paste in the reference.
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In SI/SSIs, Lawmaker will determine whether a provision should be referred to in the reference as a “sub-paragraph” or “paragraph” depending on the provision’s context. |
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You can paste over an existing cross reference. Pasting will strip out the old cross reference mark-up before inserting the new cross reference and its mark-up. |
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You can’t currently create references to EU provisions using the Structure View. |
How to ‘ignore’ automatically tagged cross references
If something has been erroneously marked up as an internal reference (e.g. it’s actually an external reference or not a cross-reference at all), you can tell Lawmaker to ignore it in future. This will stop it trying to update the reference when you use the Update x-ref feature. Marking it to be ignored rather than removing the reference all together can be more useful because it will stop it being retagged if you run Tag x-refs again.
To ignore a reference, right-click within the reference and select Ignore x-ref.
(You can also ignFrom get this feature from the upper toolbar and select ‘ignore by selecting Tools menu>Ignore x-ref’Lawmaker will update the status of the cross reference and present it according to the table belowref.)
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Any ignored reference will show up in the Editor as purple text with a dotted underline. When a document is published on Lawmaker for external systems to access, the mark-up for ignored x-refs is removed. |
How to remove (unwrap) tagged cross references
If you want to force Lawmaker to re-tag a particular cross-reference (rather than updating it), you need to remove the existing tag. To do this:
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You may also want to remove an existing x-ref tag because the text tagged isn’t a cross-reference.
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To do this, right-click within the cross-reference and select Remove x-ref tag.
(You can also do this from the upper toolbar, select Tools menu>Remove x-ref tag.)
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Please note: if you add a J-ref after creating a cross reference to that provision, you will need to run 'update x-refs' for the J-ref to be visible in the cross reference |
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Hints and tips
You can paste over an existing cross reference. Pasting will strip out the old cross reference mark up before inserting the new cross reference and its mark up
With exception to EU elements which haven’t been configured to work in cross referencing yet.
Inserting and updating cross-references between documents within Lawmaker
You can use the manual paste Structure View method to insert create a cross references -reference to a provision in other documents in the system. If you use ‘Update x-ref’ they will change from ‘Valid’ (orange text) to ‘Invalid’ (grey highlighted text) as the target provision doesn’t exist in the document you are updating. However, the link to the target provision will be preserved so if you were to paste your provision containing the cross reference back into the source document (e.g. by applying an amendment) and run ‘update x-ref’ again, the cross reference will change from ‘Invalid’ (grey highlighted text) to ‘Valid’ (orange text) as the target provision now exists in the same document as the cross reference. This will be useful when drafting a large bill in separate documents, but also when applying amendments to a bill.If you want to change a J-ref and you are currently viewing J-refs in cross references, re-run ‘Update x-ref’ to see the J-ref updatedanother document in Lawmaker. That reference can be inserted into the document you are working on. This can be useful if you are working on a Bill or SI which has been split into a number of different documents or if you are drafting an amendment which contains references to provisions in the published Bill.
To create such a reference, open the other document, follow the steps above to copy the cross-reference and then return to the document you are working on and press Ctrl+v to paste in the reference.
The reference will show up as valid when you first paste it in. However, when you update the cross-references in text, any reference to another document will show up as Invalid (grey highlighted text) and the reference won’t be updated. If at a future point the target provision is copied into the same document (or, in the case of an amendment, it is applied to the Bill), then the reference should return to being valid when you update the cross-references again.