Guide to x-ref changes in version 17

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.

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 your 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 .

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 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 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 you use the “Tag references” function to re-tag provisions that have changed substantially. The brown colouring and corresponding document check have been added to help drafters avoid creating inaccurate references when drafting and re-drafting provisions in their document 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 reference modal (see References | How-to-edit-references ). Whenever you change the 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 manually 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.

This should help to make other Lawmaker features more robust and reliable. Prior to this change, it was possible to create a reference to a specific section of a Bill (e.g. “section 5”), then type somewhere in the text of the 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.

Edit ref modal

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 reference modal. You can open this from the floating toolbar which appears when you double-click a reference, or from the right-click menu.

The first field in the modal ('Reference text') is the text of the reference as it appears in the bill; the other fields contain the background reference information associated with the reference - these fields can be ignored by most users. Textual changes can be made in the ‘Reference text’ field.

If you don’t want to use the new Edit reference 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

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, mostly on the right-click menu, but some are new - for example, “Go to ref”, which takes you to the target of the reference (see References | How-to-view-the-target-of-a-reference).

The right-click menu still contains the same x-ref functions as before, along with some new ones, like Edit reference; 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 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 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.

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.

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 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 - 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.