Content Comparison

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Pre-flight checks

1. Before you publish a bill, always start with a clean bill: you should have done this already when preparing the ‘As Introduced’ version but double check there are no ‘bad’ document checks, remove all comments and delete any jrefs.

2. Before applying amendments, always start with a clean set of amendments: to check if the amendments are clean—

   1. From the ‘Amendment Manager’, filter your list of amendments by ‘Made’ or ‘Made on division’

   2. Select all these amendments using the checkboxes

   3. SelectAmendment Actions > Create temporary list 

   4. Check the ‘Document Checks’ right-hand panel in the Editor to double check there are no mandatory checks that need addressing

   5. Remove any comments from the ‘Review’ right-hand panel

   6. Save and close your temporary list

Apply amendments & check results

From the Amendment Manager— 

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1. Filter your list of amendments by ‘Made’ or ‘Made on division’

2. Select all these amendments using the checkboxes

3. SelectAmendment Actions > Apply Amendments—

   1. Select ‘Create a new bill version (visible on the 'Project’ tab)

   2. Folder = “As amended at [stage]”

   3. Version description = “As amended at [stage]”

From the ‘Project’ tab—

Find the newly created bill version and open it in the Editor

In the Editor—

In the right-hand panel, click on the first amendment in the ‘Inline Amendments’ panel to jump to the first amendment applied to your bill

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1. Click on the tick icon on the inline amendment card in the right-hand panel to accept the amendment.

2. Check—

   1. whether any printing point changes are required and make the changes as required, and

   2. any new Document Check or XML warnings have been created and fix if you relevant.

3. Select the next amendment in the ‘Inline Amendments’ panel to jump to the next amendment applied to your bill.

4. Continue accepting and applying printing changes for each amendment applied to the bill.

Click on the ‘Review’ icon to reveal the Review right-hand panel where auto-apply warning and error messages are posted.    

1. Some messages warn you that the amendments were applied but need checking e.g. if there was more than one paragraph being inserted by different amendments in the same place and the amendments didn’t have sort codes to help Lawmaker understand the order to insert them, the warning message is asking you to check the sort order. You can use the structure view to drag & drop provisions into the correct order if necessary.

2. Some messages are error messages letting you know that a certain amendment couldn’t be applied; in this case, open up the specified amendment in a temporary list and check for any obvious mistakes e.g. page-line information, incorrect punctuation in the instruction or whitespaces at the end of the instruction if it’s inserting new provisions.

3. If you need to manually apply amendments: 

   1. Open the PDF of the published bill to help work out location of insertions/leave outs 

   2. In the Amendment Manager, select the amendment(s) that could not be applied and open them in a temporary list,

   3. Display the list side-by-side with your bill (use the Windows button on your keyboard with the left arrow to divide your monitor view in half), 

   4. To copy provisions inside a quoted structure:  

      1. Place cursor inside the quoted structure of the amendment 

      2. Right-click and select "copy content of quoted structure" 

      3. Place cursor in the bill where you would like to paste the content and use Ctrl + V.    

      4. Check for locked nums when you do this, they may need manually removing (right-mouse-click > Lock/unlock num)  

   5. To copy text from the amendment instruction:  

      1. Highlight and copy the text within the quotation marks 

      2. Place cursor in the bill where you would like to paste the content and use Ctrl + V 

4. Delete the warnings that you’ve dealt with as you go so you can keep track of which issues you have resolved.

Finalise document 

To finalise the document, you need to close the document in the Editor and return to the ‘Project’ tab.  To minimise the number of repeating steps in this process, the recommended sequence is: 

1. https://lawmaker.scrollhelp.site/help/live/updating-document-information-from-project-tab (e.g., version rubric and dates) 

2. https://lawmaker.scrollhelp.site/help/live/finalising-a-document (select what you need from the options e.g., renumber, update x-refs, reinsert front/back covers including table of contents).

Final checks

1. Open the document in the Editor 

   1. If you reinserted a front cover, you may need to open the document in the Editor and check the statements are correct.

   2. Check Document Checks right-hand panel 

      1. The only issues you should see here are invalid x-refs that Lawmaker was unable to resolve or benign ‘advisory’ document checks 

      2. Correct the invalid x-refs for anything obvious (or is this OLC responsibility?) 

      3. Save changes when you have dealt with all Document Check warnings 

   3. Check the Table of Contents – have you got the expected number of clauses and schedules?

   4. Save and close the bill 

2. From project tab: compare document versions 

   1. Compare the previous version of the bill with the as amended copy you have been working on to check where changes have been made 

   2. First you will need to duplicate BOTH working versions to strip out any page-line numbers (future version of Lawmaker will ignore page-line numbers in documents so you will not have to remember this step) 

   3. Start with the as amended bill version you have just created and run Actions > Compare Version to compare it with the duplicated previous bill version 

   4. Generating a PDF might be a quicker way of skimming through the document looking for changes (and any missing printing point changes) 

3. Send the PDF for checking