Version 17 includes several improvements to Lawmaker’s referencing tools which extend the x-ref functionality already present in earlier versions of 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 brown. 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.
This scenario won’t happen to many x-refs in practice and will only happen if you use the “Tag references” function to re-tag provisions that have changed substantially. The dark red highlighting brown colouring and corresponding document check have been added to help drafters avoid creating inaccurate references when drafting and re-drafting provisions in their document while repeatedly re-running the automatic tagging feature.
The other important visual change is to the appearance of x-refs which you have manually edited using the new Edit reference 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 manually adjusted.
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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 manually. This is existing functionality and remains unchanged from previous versions.
The Tag references function can be used to find and mark up external references inside Quoted Structures in amendment lists. In other words, it’s possible to automatically tag external references inside amendments which insert new structural content or new clauses/paragraphs into a bill. In the screenshot below, a reference to the Companies Act 2006 is included in an amendment inserting a new clause, and the automatic tagging feature has been used to mark this as an external reference:
Both internal and external references can be included in the text of amendments, and this will have no effect on any existing amendment list functionality. (
Note that external references are unlikely to appear in amendment lists until drafters are able to use the automatic Tag references functionality to mark up both internal bill references and external references in the context of LoDAs.)
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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