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Version 16.0.0 of Lawmaker introduces some new features, updates the look and feel of the Editor and includes some bug fixes.

It was released on 23 March 2024.

New features and improvements

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There is now an option when generating a PDF of a document (e.g. Bill, SI, amendment list) to produce a large print version. That will produce a PDF where all the text is 20pt Arial to aid readability. This is a general features designed to work across all document types but there may still be some edge cases where the output isn’t perfect (e.g. numbers may overlap with text in certain circumstances and text in tables may overlap between cells) and we’ll be improving this feature in future versions based on additional feedback.

See Generating and viewing a PDF .

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Generation of PDFs and publishing documents in the background

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• Generating a PDF (from the Project tab or within the Editor)

• Publishing a document

• Importing a document from legislation.gov.uk

A notification will appear at the bottom of the screen indicating that the operation is in progress. When the operation is finished, you’ll see a another notification pop up at the bottom of the screen. In the case of PDFs, you can click on the notification to open the PDF.

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New version of Oxygen Web Author

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• the design of the panels at the right hand side (e.g. Document Checks and Document Information) has changed so icons are used instead of names.

• Find and replace (ctrl+F) now appears as a panel on the right hand side rather than as a dialog box. makes it easier to see both the search panel and the document with results highlighted. Moreover, it makes it possible to see all search results at a glance without having to scroll through the document.

• A Tags Display Mode switcher was added directly in the breadcrumb bar to make it easier to change the amount of Tags that are displayed when exploring the document structure. Image Added

Upgrading the version of Oxygen also resolves some security flaws present in earlier versions.

[External X-refs

The Tag X-ref function will now tag some external references as well as internal references.

By “external reference” we mean a reference to an Act, secondary legislation or EU legislation.

The references that are currently handled are those references where the Act or SI title is included as part of the reference, e.g. “section 5 of the Criminal Justice Act 2000” or “paragraph (1) and (2) of regulation 45 of the Procurement Regulations 2023”.

The feature uses the data behind legislation.gov.uk to lookup and identify the appropriate legislative documents.

External references that are not currently handled (but will be tackled in later releases) include:

• References that refer back to a previously mentioned Act or SI etc., e.g. “section 7 of that Act”

• References that implicitly external due to their context but don’t directly include the title of the Act or SI etc., e.g. references in provisions following a statement like “Section 32 of the Criminal Justice Act 2000 is amended as follows.”

• References that rely on defined names for an Act or SI rather than its proper name, e.g. “Regulation 17 of the 2009 Regulations”]

Image Added

UK and Scottish Bills - Order of Consideration validation

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To cancel the save, click on the banner at the bottom of the screen. The banner will change when the save operation gets to a point when it can no longer be cancelled.

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When you cancel a save: you will be taken back to the Editor, your document will be as it was before the save, and you will be able to make further changes to it. The save button should be activated allowing you to restart the save operation.

This is particularly to help in the situation reported by users in some organisations that the save operation gets stuck at 0% or later but it may also be useful where you have triggered a save on a large document by accident and don’t want to wait until it is complete.

As part of these changes, we’ve also improved the robustness of the save operation generally so that the progress bar will be skipped if it is likely to cause problems (due its reliance on Websocket technology which can be blocked in some networks).

See Saving your document

Auto-application of amendments - checking for page/line information

Before attempting to apply any amendments to a Bill, Lawmaker now checks that the Bill version you are applying amendments to contains the necessary page and line information. This is to prevent the case where all amendments fail to apply due to the lacBill version not having page and line information embedded within it.

Improved sorting of ping pong motions in the Lords - amendments to amendments

When generating a Lords daily sheet or marshalled list etc. of motions and amendments during ping pong, the sorting algorithm now takes account of any line number mentioned in amendments to amendments to sort them in the correct order if there is more than one relating to the same amendment.

Changes to XML mark-up for tables

To aid standard compliance and accessibility, the XML mark-up used to represent tables (which is based on the XHTML standard) has been updated to use <th> elements for cells in a header row rather than <td> elements. There is no different from a presentation perspective, in the Editor or in PDFs.

Document check improvements

A number of improvements have been made to Document checks. These include fixes to existing checks and new rules:

New rules

1. Identify Any manual page breaks that have been inserted in the document - LDAPP-3177 -will now show up in the document check panel to make it easier to find and delete them when no longer needed - 

   Jira Legacy
   server System JIRAJira serverId 18b81902-662f-326c-8748-cd8a7213ac3e key LMS-913

    - pattern ID "page-breaks"

2. Identify table cells that contain quoted structures or nested tables and warn of line numbering issues - pattern ID "tables" updated

3. Identify definitions that contain two //p elements as likely occurrences of copy/paste error (user probably meant to create two definitions - pattern ID "definitions" updated

4. Identify empty definitions - LEGDEV-6125 - pattern ID "definitions" updated. Quickfix added to delete empty element

5. Identify <inline name="placeholder"> and <ref class="placeholder"> elements that are non-empty. Dealing with the case identified where an SI was submitted that had a footnote inserted within a placeholder. pattern ID "placeholders". Quickfixes to remove placeholder in 1st case and remove content in 2nd case.

6. Identify cases where there is an <intro> but no children - [LMS-1642] Invalid structure in UKPGA 2023/37 - Jira Service Management (atlassian.net) - pattern id "intros" - added quickfix to convert intro to content -

7. Identify provisions that have 2 num elements and add quickfix to delete second one -  Jira LegacyserverSystem JIRA.

8. A warning will appear if a table cell in a Bill contains complex content such as a quoted structure or a nested table because it may affect line numbering.

9. Definitions that contain two separate text paragraphs will be highlighted as it is likely that these were intended to be two separate definitions. This can sometimes happen when a user copies and pastes the content of a definition or uses shift+Enter to insert an additional paragraph.

10. Empty definition elements, where everything has been deleted other than the definition element itself, are now highlighted and a quickfix option to delete the empty element is provided (LEGDEV-6125).

11. Placeholders that contain text when they should be empty are highlighted. This happens when attempts are made to overwrite the content of placeholders in a document that show key document info (e.g. the document title). It can also occur when the placeholders in templates that should disappear when you type into them don’t disappear for some reason. Quickfix options are provided to resolve the issue (by either deleting deleting the text or deleting the placeholder element, depending on the specific issue).

12. Provisions containing opening words but no child provisions (e.g. a subsection with no child paragraphs) are highlighted with an option to convert the opening words back to normal content. Usually Lawmaker will do this automatically but the document check provides an additional way to pick up any cases left behind. (LMS-1642)

13. Any provisions that contain two number elements rather than just one are highlighted and a quickfix provided to delete the second number element (

    Jira Legacy
    server System Jira serverId 18b81902-662f-326c-8748-cd8a7213ac3e key LMS-2019

     - pattern "hcontainer" updated and quickfix to remove any additional nums added

14. Identify unnumbered paragraphs that begin with something that looks like a number - LEGDEV-6090 - pattern id "unnumbered-paragraphs" - quickfix to remove the number added.

Fix/update existing rules

1. Correct numbering check for EUProv2 elements (paragraphs) which should be Arabic numerals followed by a full stop - ). All provisions should have a maximum of one number element but sometimes by copying and pasting a provision can end up with more than one.

2. Highlight cases where an unnumbered paragraph has been used to create something looking like a numbered paragraph when a numbered provision type (e.g. a “paragraph (a)” or “subsection (1)”) should have been inserted instead (LEGDEV-6090).

Fixes and updates to existing rules

1. The check for correct numbering format now works correctly in relation to paragraphs within EU articles(

   Jira Legacy
   server System JIRAJira serverId 18b81902-662f-326c-8748-cd8a7213ac3e key LMS-2295

   )

2. Allow schedule Schedule numbers are now allowed to be in the form format of "Appendix x" rather than as well as "Schedule x" -  (

   Jira Legacy
   server System JIRAJira serverId 18b81902-662f-326c-8748-cd8a7213ac3e key LMS-1807

   )

3. Remove Fixed the issue causing false positives where ping pong amendment's docStage stage doesn't match the Consolidated List docStage stage because of the addition of the Bill number to the list stage version -

   Jira Legacy
   server System JIRA serverId 18b81902-662f-326c-8748-cd8a7213ac3e key LMS-1812

    Deal with .

4. Fixed an issue causing false positives in relation to the error message warning of two lists back-to-back - in an SI’s explanatory note ( [LMS-2302] Explanatory notes and an error message - Jira Service Management (atlassian.net) Remove following error - When opening a single schedule with 'Edit portion of document', the following validation issue occurs )  

5. Errors like “"Advisory: There is only one schedule so its number should be "Schedule" not "Schedule 3" no longer show when opening a single schedule with Edit portion of document feature. 

6. Deal with feedback on legal numbering from v.15 version (see LDAPP-4191). 

7. Update x-ref rule that checks citation matches @href attribute to cope with external reference - pattern ID "invalid-xrefs"

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New organisations

The following organisations have been added to Lawmaker:

• The Church of England (SPT-1556)

• The Attorney Generals Office (SPT-1440)

Bug fixes