This is a major release containing a range of new features, significant enhancements to the referencing functionality, a new beta feature to generate citation footnotes in SIs and some bug fixes.
It was released on [x 21 August 2024].
References to other provisions and documents
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References that refer back to a previously mentioned Act or SI etc., e.g. “section 7 of that Act”
References that are 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”, so long as the name is defined in the same document somewhere.
See Cross-references (x-refs) References and Guide to x-ref changes in version 17 .
Referencing toolbar
The new referencing toolbar (accessible by double clicking on a reference) makes it easy to complete a number of actions directly in the Editor.
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The text of a reference can no longer still be directly edited in the Editor but you can also use the Edit reference option in the toolbar to update the text and metadata fields if necessary (the ability to edit the reference text directly will be removed in the next release).
You can also trigger an update of the reference, mark it to be ignored or remove the reference mark-up from the toolbar.
See References.
Creating internal references from provisions in the Editor (rather than the structure view)
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This replicates the functionality that was previously only available from the structure view.
See References.
Generating citation footnotes in SIs
Lawmaker v.17 includes a new beta feature to automatically generate citation legislative history footnotes for external references in an SI or SSI.
This feature relies on the data from legislation.gov.uk to generate footnotes that contain summarised amendment history of the referenced provisonprovision.
See (add page for citation footnotes Citation footnotes (legislative history footnote) for more on this.
Church Measures
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Church Measure is a new document type available from the Create New Project dialog box. Broadly speaking the functionality and presentation for Church Measures is the same as for UK Bills. However, there is no ability to create amendments or amendment lists.
See Drafting Church Measures, Managing a Church Measure in Parliament and Creating an Enacted version of a draft Church Measure .
Quoted text
When drafting a textual amendment to another enactment that only involves a word or phrase rather than a whole provision, you can insert a Quoted Text element to represent the text that is being left out, inserted or substituted.
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Quote marks automatically appear but can be removed or altered if necessary.
See Quoted Text.
Sorting amendments by marshalled order on the Amendment Manager Tab
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The previous “OoC sort” function has been removed.
See Sorting amendments on the Amendment Manager Tab.
Scripted marshalled list improvements
Some limited improvements to the functionality for generating Scripted Marshalled Lists in the Scottish Parliament have been implemented.
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When amendments are submitted directly from a list of draft amendments, the receiving organisation (e.g. the Commons or Scottish Parliament) will also receive a copy of the list (accessible from the Amendment Workspace tab) so they can see the order in which they appeared on that list and to help them manage the amendment checking and tabling process.
Uploading amendment list XML to create new amendments
A new option on the Amendment Workspace tab allows you to upload amendment list XML in order to create new Draft amendments against a specific bill version.
Amendment list XML can be downloaded by selecting ‘Download ZIP file’ from the Actions menu next to any amendment list on the Amendment Workspace or Official Lists tabs. The ZIP file contains XML which can then be uploaded to any other bill project to recreate the amendments from that list as new draft amendments.
See Uploading amendment lists to create new amendments.
Editing fragments of a schedule
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In consequence of this change, the structure view now shows the grouping levels within a schedule by default.
See Opening and editing a portion of document and Locking document fragments/multi-user editing.
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Schedules created in documents before this version is released will not immediately be fragmented in the new way - they will remain as single fragments that can only be edited and locked at that level. However, as soon as the document is saved again after this release, all schedules in the document will be fragmented at the grouping level. |
SI improvements and changes
Dates in the date block that are left empty now automatically show as three asterisks “***”.
If all the paragraphs within a regulation or article are deleted other than one, the remaining paragraph is automatically unwrapped so an undivided regulation or article is left.
The banner is now locked in the Editor to prevent accidental changes. It will still update automatically if the procedure is changed.
The content of the subject, title and number blocks at the beginning of an SI are now locked in the main Editor window to prevent accidental changes. You can still update the subject by clicking on it and selecting the appropriate subjects in the dialog box. The title and number can still be updated via the Document Information panel on the right.
The list of available subjects in the Subjects dialog box has been updated.
OFGEM and OFCOM have been added as new Lawmaker organisations.
Bug fixes
SI/SSIs
Issue key |
|---|
Summary | User support ticket | |
|---|---|---|
SPT-1703 | Fixed a problem that occurred when copying an SI document to another project if the document didn’t have enacting text | |
SPT-1700 | Fixed a bug where pasting text consisting of SI regulations or articles into Lawmaker resulted in the full stop being deleted from the regulation number if auto-renumber was switched on | |
SPT-1695 | Updated the list of subject headings available in Lawmaker | |
SPT-1689 | Fixed an issue with the spacing of SI paragraphs when there are first provision within a quoted structure | |
SPT-1679 | Fixed an issue where certain wordings of SI/SSI dates would result in the date being split over two lines | |
SPT-1676 | Fixed an issue resulting in the procedure of SI not updating on the Project tab or Dashboard | |
SPT-1671 | Two new organisations added to Lawmaker: OFGEM and OFCOM |
Editor
Issue key | Summary | User support ticket |
|---|---|---|
SPT-1713 | Fixed an issue that could sometimes cause the Editor, and the CCA in particular, to behave incorrectly (due to Oxygen failing to use the correct document filter - LDAPPDocumentFilter) | |
SPT-1711 | Fixed an issue where Oxygen would sometimes fail to retrieve the XML from the server for operations like auto- |
QA Ready
save, save and structure view updates | ||
SPT-1706 | Fixed an issue where lots of spelling errors in a document could cause the "A problem has occurred" error to appears. (Included in patch release 16.2.2.) | |
SPT-1702 | Fixed a performance issue in Editor (getElementByGuid Oxygen client-side code). ( |
Included in patch release 16.2.1) | |
SPT- |
QA Ready
1701 | Fixed an issue in the Editor which cause the screen to jump to a different location when the paste operation was triggered. | |
SPT-1699 | Fixed a performance issue in the Editor when copying a reasonable number of provisions at one time. (Included in patch release 16.2.1.) | |
SPT-1683 | Fixed an issue with the Mark as done toggle in the Review panel not working in certain cases. | |
SPT-1672 | Fixed an issue which occurred when rejecting "surround" tracked changes which was introduced with Oxygen v.25.1 upgrade. | |
SPT-1653 | Fixed an issue that could cause a document to get corrupted if the user tries to edit a document while the renumber operation is progressing. | |
SPT-1656 | Fixed an issue with Promote/Demote of closing words where it would unwrap inline formatting and footnotes. | |
SPT-1631 | Fixed an issue with the Copy Provisions to another document feature where provisions selected in a certain order would not be pushed correctly. | |
SPT-1616 | Fixed an issue that prevented schedules being moved in the structure view in some cases. | |
SPT-1611 | Fixed an issue that caused “A problem has occurred” message to appear in some cases when the user accepted tracked changes. (Included in patch release 16.2.1) | |
SPT-1609 | Fixed an issue which affected Cross-references inside tracked change deletions if the references in the provision were updated. |
PDFs
Issue key | Summary | User support ticket |
|---|---|---|
SPT-1696 | Quoted structure in change track have incorrect indent | |
SPT-1693 |
Done
Text in ukpga quoted structure //section/intro is not justified in PDF | |
SPT-1692 |
Done
Page numbering broken from page 10 onwards in Scottish Parliamentary Amendment lists | ||
SPT-1691 | Empty paragraph element wrongly aligned in PDF | |
SPT-1682 |
Long hyperlinks (URLs) that are split across multiple lines have line spacing issues in the PDF and CSS issues in footnotes in the editor | ||
SPT- |
QA Ready
Specific wordings of SI/SSI dates still causes line break
SPT-1677
QA Ready
ALL CAPS text is displayed with additional spacing in the Edit Portion dropdown
SPT-1676
Done
Procedure of SI on the Project tab or Dashboard is locked in after creation and unchangeable
SPT-1633
QA Check
1558 | Resolve PDF rendering issues caused by missing attributes on quotedStructures (ukl:docName and ukl:indent) |
Amendments
Issue key | Summary | User support ticket |
|---|---|---|
SPT-1690 | Wrong placement of material dragged into containers in amendment QSs | |
SPT-1651 | Auto-apply: amendments which leave out words after a Defined term can't be applied if the quotation marks on the defined term are included in the amendment instruction | |
SPT-1646 | Extra spaces appear in certain substituting amendments when auto-applied to a bill version | |
SPT-1633 | Auto-applying amendments to rref elements sometimes results in too much text being included in the rref; original rref's href attributes also persist | |
SPT-1632 |
Auto-applied amendment which inserts text beginning with punctuation after a <ref> element adds the text inside the <ref> when accepted |
| Jira Legacy | ||||||
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SPT-1631
QA Check
Incorrect Document Push in Copy Provisions Operation
SPT-1627
Done
Incorrect comparison result when an x-ref has been updated within a <mod>
| Jira Legacy | ||||||
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SPT-1611
Done
Oxygen exceptions occurring when a user accepts tracked change edits ("A problem has occurred") (included in patch release 16.2.1)
| Jira Legacy | ||||||
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SPT-1558
Done
Resolve PDF rendering issues caused by missing attributes on quotedStructures (ukl:docName and ukl:indent)
SPT-993
QA Ready
SPT-1266 | Side-lining on auto-applied insert section amendment goes down too far | |
SPT-1608 | Moving an amendment in a LoDA using the Structure View with tracked changes turned on results in the amendment being duplicated | |
SPT-1541 | Auto-saved traditional amendments in an inline LoDA cannot be restored into the working version |
Document management (Project tab, comparison, permissions etc.)
Issue key | Summary | User support ticket |
|---|---|---|
SPT-1662 | Duplicating an 'Auto backup' snapshot results in the wrong XML content being retrieved - later changes are included in the duplicate | |
SPT-1218 | User who first created document still has read-only access when their permissions are removed | |
SPT-1677 | ALL CAPS text is displayed with additional spacing in the Edit Portion dropdown | |
SPT-1648 | Opening an Edit portion document in parallel with others causes issues | |
SPT-1645 | When logging out with two Editor tabs open (one containing a portion of a version), it's not possible to 'Save all changes' in the 'Unsaved changes' modal | |
SPT-1665 | Comparison output moves opening words into the wrong position on Scottish Bill | |
SPT-1657 | XML comparison functionality doesn't handle processing instructions appropriately | |
SPT-1627 | Incorrect comparison result when an x-ref has been updated within a <mod> |
API and misc
Issue key | Summary | User support ticket |
|---|---|---|
SPT-993 | Updated authentication to the API to prevent api accounts being unnecessarily disabled |
Known issues
This section of the release note highlights any minor issues identified with the release that will be corrected in a future release:
Order of provisions in CCA is incorrect after a quoted text element is inserted: Normally, if your cursor is in a provision such as a subsection, when you press Enter, the item at the top of the list will be the most common sibling provision to the one you are in. So, if you are in a subsection then “Subsection” will be at the top of the list. This means that pressing Enter twice, or pressing ctrl+Enter originally, will insert the common sibling element. However, in version 17, if you have inserted a quoted text element into a provision and you subsequently press Enter when your cursor is not in the quoted text element, then “Quoted text” will appear at the top of the CCA instead leading to incorrect behaviour in relation to pressing Enter twice or pressing ctrl+Enter.