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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In addition to distinguishing between internal and external references, the automatic tagging operation also searches legislation.gov.uk for information about the external references it finds, and adds that information to the billyour document. These external references to existing law are identified based on the title and year present in the text. Reference tags are then added to the document, containing links to the relevant page on http://legislation.gov.uk are then added to the document .
Appearance of the references in the Editor
Because Lawmaker now supports internal and external references in documents (and to address some accessibility concerns), the visual representation of these references has changed. Previously, x-refs were shown in light orange text. From version 17, x-refs display differently:
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 a user chooses you use the “Tag references” function to re-tag provisions using the Tag references feature. The dark red highlighting that have changed substantially. The brown colouring and corresponding document check have been added to help drafters avoid creating inaccurate references when creating drafting and editing re-drafting provisions in their document and 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 refreference 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 editedmanually adjusted.
Locking of reference text in the Editor
In earlier versions of Lawmaker, it was possible to type over or edit the text of x-refs directly in the Editor. In version 17, it is no longer possible to do this. This restriction has been introduced in order to reduce the likelihood of users inadvertently creating discrepancies between the text of the reference and the information associated with that reference - i.e. the information about the target provision which the reference links to, whether that be an internal or external reference.
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If you do need to edit the text of a reference to make a minor change to the reference text, e.g. to adjust the capitalisation of the word “section”, you can now do this using the new Edit refreference modal. You can open this from the floating toolbar which appears when you double-click a reference, or from the right-click menu.
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If you don’t want to use the new Edit refreference modal to make changes to an x-ref, you can instead Remove the x-ref tagging from a specific reference by right-clicking on it and selecting ‘Remove reference tag’ , (or by selecting the same option from the floating toolbar - see below). You can then re-type it in the desired format, and re-tag it by selecting it and clicking the “Tag x-refs” button in the Editor toolbar.
Floating toolbar for x-refs
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The right-click menu still contains the same x-ref functions as before, along with some new ones, like Edit refreference; the floating toolbar is another way of accessing the same functionality.
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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.
(There is no prohibition on external references appearing in amendments, but these are unlikely to occur until the automatic tagging function has been enhanced to work on amendment lists.)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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This is because the XML tags which represent internal and external references are largely the same as they were in previous Lawmaker releases - all that has changed is the information stored in those tags. As a result, auto-application of amendments should work as before, and the presence of external references in a bill should not prevent amendments from auto-applying.
Appearance and formatting of PDFs
The appearance of x-refs in generated PDFs is unchanged from previous Lawmaker versions. There is nothing to distinguish them visually from the other text in a Bill or SI - they are rendered according to whether they are in the body of a document or a heading, using the existing rules for rendering text in those locations, and will therefore appear the same as text which is not contained in x-ref tags.
Note that clickable hyperlinks are added to x-refs in generated PDFs , as in previous Lawmaker version: - this is existing functionality from earlier Lawmaker versions. In version 17, this means that internal x-refs in a generated PDF will function as a link which takes you to the relevant page of the PDF, while external x-refs function as a link which takes you to the relevant page of legislation.gov.uk.