What's new in version 16?

Version 16.0.0 of Lawmaker introduces some new features, updates the look and feel of the Editor and includes some bug fixes.

It was released on 23 March 2024.

New features and improvements

Large print PDFs

There is now an option when generating a PDF of a document (e.g. Bill, SI, amendment list) to produce a large print version. That will produce a PDF where all the text is 20pt Arial to aid readability. This is a general features designed to work across all document types but there may still be some edge cases where the output isn’t perfect (e.g. numbers may overlap with text in certain circumstances and text in tables may overlap between cells) and we’ll be improving this feature in future versions based on additional feedback.

See Generating and viewing a PDF .

Generation of PDFs and publishing documents in the background

Rather than having to wait until the operation is complete, you can now continue to work when doing the following:

• Generating a PDF (from the Project tab or within the Editor)

• Publishing a document

• Importing a document from legislation.gov.uk

A notification will appear at the bottom of the screen indicating that the operation is in progress. When the operation is finished, you’ll see another notification pop up at the bottom of the screen. In the case of PDFs, you can click on the notification to open the PDF.

New version of Oxygen Web Author

The Editor in Lawmaker is now based on Oxygen Web Author version 25.1.

This brings a number of minor improvements and fixes but also changes the look and feel of some aspects of the Editor. Specific things to note:

• the design of the panels at the right hand side (e.g. Document Checks and Document Information) has changed so icons are used instead of names.

• Find and replace (ctrl+F) now appears as a panel on the right hand side rather than as a dialog box. makes it easier to see both the search panel and the document with results highlighted. Moreover, it makes it possible to see all search results at a glance without having to scroll through the document.

• A Tags Display Mode switcher was added directly in the breadcrumb bar to make it easier to change the amount of Tags that are displayed when exploring the document structure.

Upgrading the version of Oxygen also resolves some security flaws present in earlier versions.

UK and Scottish Bills - Order of Consideration validation

When you save changes to an Order of Consideration (accessed on the Amendment Manager Tab), Lawmaker will now validate that every clause/section/schedule mentioned in the updated Order exists in the published version of the Bill. This enables you to fix the issue before it results in issues when you try and generate an amendment list based on the Order.

Cancelling Save operation

You can now cancel a save operation mid-way through and be able to continue working on the document or retry saving it.

To cancel the save, click on the banner at the bottom of the screen. The banner will change when the save operation gets to a point when it can no longer be cancelled.

When you cancel a save: you will be taken back to the Editor, your document will be as it was before the save, and you will be able to make further changes to it. The save button should be activated allowing you to restart the save operation.

This is particularly to help in the situation reported by users in some organisations that the save operation gets stuck at 0% or later but it may also be useful where you have triggered a save on a large document by accident and don’t want to wait until it is complete.

As part of these changes, we’ve also improved the robustness of the save operation generally so that the progress bar will be skipped if it is likely to cause problems (due its reliance on Websocket technology which can be blocked in some networks).

See Saving your document

Auto-application of amendments - checking for page/line information

Before attempting to apply any amendments to a Bill, Lawmaker now checks that the Bill version you are applying amendments to contains the necessary page and line information. This is to prevent the case where all amendments fail to apply due to the Bill version not having page and line information embedded within it.

Improved sorting of ping pong motions in the Lords - amendments to amendments

When generating a Lords daily sheet or marshalled list etc. of motions and amendments during ping pong, the sorting algorithm now takes account of any line number mentioned in amendments to amendments to sort them in the correct order if there is more than one relating to the same amendment.

Changes to XML mark-up for tables

To aid standard compliance and accessibility, the XML mark-up used to represent tables (which is based on the XHTML standard) has been updated to use <th> elements for cells in a header row rather than <td> elements. There is no different from a presentation perspective, in the Editor or in PDFs.

Document check improvements

A number of improvements have been made to Document checks. These include fixes to existing checks and new rules:

New rules

1. Any manual page breaks that have been inserted in the document will now show up in the document check panel to make it easier to find and delete them when no longer needed - LMS-913.

2. A warning will appear if a table cell in a Bill contains complex content such as a quoted structure or a nested table because it may affect line numbering.

3. Definitions that contain two separate text paragraphs will be highlighted as it is likely that these were intended to be two separate definitions. This can sometimes happen when a user copies and pastes the content of a definition or uses shift+Enter to insert an additional paragraph.

4. Empty definition elements, where everything has been deleted other than the definition element itself, are now highlighted and a quickfix option to delete the empty element is provided (LEGDEV-6125).

5. Placeholders that contain text when they should be empty are highlighted. This happens when attempts are made to overwrite the content of placeholders in a document that show key document info (e.g. the document title). It can also occur when the placeholders in templates that should disappear when you type into them don’t disappear for some reason. Quickfix options are provided to resolve the issue (by either deleting deleting the text or deleting the placeholder element, depending on the specific issue).

6. Provisions containing opening words but no child provisions (e.g. a subsection with no child paragraphs) are highlighted with an option to convert the opening words back to normal content. Usually Lawmaker will do this automatically but the document check provides an additional way to pick up any cases left behind. (LMS-1642)

7. Any provisions that contain two number elements rather than just one are highlighted and a quickfix provided to delete the second number element (LMS-2019). All provisions should have a maximum of one number element but sometimes by copying and pasting a provision can end up with more than one.

8. Highlight cases where an unnumbered paragraph has been used to create something looking like a numbered paragraph when a numbered provision type (e.g. a “paragraph (a)” or “subsection (1)”) should have been inserted instead (LEGDEV-6090).

Fixes and updates to existing rules

1. The check for correct numbering format now works correctly in relation to paragraphs within EU articles(LMS-2295 )

2. Schedule numbers are now allowed to be in the format of "Appendix x" as well as "Schedule x"  (LMS-1807 )

3. Fixed the issue causing false positives where amendment's stage doesn't match the Consolidated List stage because of the addition of the Bill number to the list stage version.

4. Fixed an issue causing false positives in relation to two lists back-to-back in an SI’s explanatory note ( [LMS-2302] Explanatory notes and an error message - Jira Service Management (atlassian.net))  

5. Errors like “"Advisory: There is only one schedule so its number should be "Schedule" not "Schedule 3" no longer show when opening a single schedule with Edit portion of document feature. 

New organisations

The following organisations have been added to Lawmaker:

• The Church of England (SPT-1556)

• The Attorney Generals Office (SPT-1440)

Bug fixes