Version 17 includes several improvements to Lawmaker’s referencing tools which extend the x-ref functionality already present in 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.
Scope of the changes
Automatic tagging of references
The majority of these improvements consist of changes to the existing automated Tag references feature. In version 17, clicking the “tag references” button in the toolbar 
will add x-ref tags to both internal and external references in the selected text.
In previous versions of Lawmaker, the automatic tagging operation only recognised internal references; that is, it only identified cross-references between provisions within the current document. Where references to other documents existed in the text - for example, in a section of a bill which makes reference to another Act or SI - the automatic tagging feature previously identified many of these as internal references and tagged them erroneously. This is now fixed, and the automatic tagging operation should now distinguish between internal and external references and tag them accordingly.
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 bill. These external references to existing law are identified based on the title and year present in the text Reference tags containing links to the relevant page on 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. 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 to re-tag provisions using the Tag references feature. The dark red highlighting and corresponding document check have been added to help drafters avoid creating inaccurate references when creating and editing provisions in their document and 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 ref’ 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 changed by the user.
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 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 of the reference.
This should help to make other Lawmaker features more robust and reliable. Prior to this change, it was easy to create a reference to a specific section of a Bill (e.g. “section 5”), then type somewhere in that reference in order to change it (e.g. “sections 5 or 7”), while leaving the associated target information unchanged. This created problems with the “Update x-refs” function later on.
If you need to edit the text of reference to make a minor change the reference text, e.g. to adjust the capitalisation of the word “section”, you can now do this using the Edit ref modal. The first field in the modal is the text of the reference as it appears in the bill; textual changes can be made here. Alternatively, you can Remove the x-ref tagging from a specific reference, re-type it, and re-tag it by selecting it and clicking the “Tag x-refs” button in the toolbar.
Floating toolbar for x-refs
All functions relating to x-refs are now accessible from a floating toolbar which appears when you double-click on a reference in the Editor. Many of the functions on this toolbar were present in earlier versions of Lawmaker, and available from the right-click menu, but some are new - for example, “Go to ref”, which takes you to the target of the reference.
The right-click menu still contains the same x-ref functions as before, along with some new ones, like Edit ref; the floating toolbar is another way of accessing the same functionality.
Functionality which is not affected by these changes
Update references
The ‘Update references’ function 
has not been changed in version 17. It is still possible to update the text of internal cross-references using ‘update references’ - the presence of external references in a document should have no effect on this functionality.
Amendment lists
Automatic tagging of references does not work in the context of amendments lists, as before. Internal references to a bill can still be copied from a bill version and pasted into the text of an amendment in a list. 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.)
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.
Auto-application of amendments
Automatic application of amendments containing x-refs, or amendments which make changes to the text of x-refs in a bill version, will continue to work as before.
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 applying.