Summary
Version 17 includes several new features and a number of bug fixes: What's new in version 17?
Tests were performed using a mix of newly created documents and existing real-world documents copied from Production.
To test UK Bills functionality, we used the Leasehold and Freehold Reform Bill, Renters' Reform Bill, Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Bill, along with the corresponding tabled amendments to those bills. We also imported UK Act content from legislation.gov.uk to test performance on large documents, including the Energy Act 2023 and Online Safety Act 2023.
To test Scottish bills functionality, we used the Bankruptcy and Diligence (Scotland) Bill,
During the pre-release period, testing focussed on the following areas of the system:
Automatic tagging of references
Version 17 includes a number of significant improvements to the Tag x-refs function. Lawmaker will now identify both internal and external references and tag them.
Our testing focused on the new behaviour of the automatic tagging function in a variety of document types, using real-world documents. Where references were missed or tagged incorrectly, we worked with the development team to refine the tagging algorithm further. We have included those refinements in the final Version 17 deployment.
Documents containing the newly tagged references were then used in end-to-end tests, to ensure that existing Lawmaker functionality is unaffected by the refinements to the automatic tagging function and the tags generated by that function.
Generation of citation footnotes in SIs
Version 17 gives users the ability to automatically generate citation footnotes in SIs. The content and format of these footnotes was tested against real SI content imported from legislation.gov.uk. We amde a number of refinements to the wording and formatting of these footnotes during the pre-release period.
Issues found during testing
We identified a problem with the tag x-refs function and the ‘remove reference tag’ action which affected some references in documents containing line numbering. Where a reference extended over the end of a line, using the automatic tagging function or the ‘remove reference tag’ action (from the right-click menu or the floating toolbar) would sometimes remove both the XML tags and the textual content of the reference. Only the reference tags should be removed. This has now been fixed.
We identified a bug which prevented images displaying in the Editor. This has been fixed.