The HTML so-called “side by side” version does not display on screen as side by side but as “page by page”. This is very confusing (not helped by the completely different paragraph numbers for the EN) and so is useless.

The pdf format would be better if it could be displayed in side by side, 2 pages at a time view but the version I have of Acrobat reader only brings up one page at a time. This would work better printed out but would not be much better than comparing separate printed copies of the Bill and EN.

The interwoven version is much better than the other two trial formats, although again the EN paragraph numbers do not relate to the Bill text. It would be easier to use if the EN came after the Bill text rather than before, and if the EN could be broken down into sub-clauses for long clauses.

How would the interwoven or linked EN work where the Bill is republished after amendment? At present, it is not usual for the EN to be redrafted with every new version of the Bill. Clause numbers can change, with new clauses and Parts inserted or removed in Committee, so the EN would need to be updated with each version.

It would be much more useful to have the new versions of the Bill show the amendments that have been made, and even better if it could link to the Hansard committee proceedings.

As for links to other legislation that Matthew dreams of (above), that would be wonderful but I’m sure that Parliamentary resources wouldn’t run to providing such a service without charge. That’s why we pay our subscription to LexisNexis and Westlaw! I’ve worked in law publishing and it’s an extemely labour intensive task.

In relation to your question :

“The Web Centre would like to know your thoughts on this development, do you know of other sites that have this functionality, is there is a better way to present this information.”

I am currently working on an open source project called TiddlyDocs which is designed to allow conversations to take place around large documents.

http://tiddlydocs.com/

Its early stages but if your interested I could quite easily write a script to import the bill and explanatory comments into TiddlyDocs so that you could play around with it.

So ignoring those and concentrating on the only usable version – yes, it’s clearly good to have the ENs accessible from the Bill itself, but I agree with Stuart that side-by-side would seem to make more sense – opening any non-trivial EN pushes what it’s talking about completely out of the way. It could also do with better interweaving than currently – why is there only one EN for the whole of e.g. Schedule 9 on http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200809/cmbills/085/09085_iw/09085_iw_en_27.htm rather than the relevant bits being interwoven in the correct places? It’s about as hard to work to match that up as it would be if they were still separate documents, whereas if e.g. the Armed Forces bit of the EN was with the Armed Forces section of the Bill, that would make much more sense.

But, good as an improvement to get the ENs in with the Bill text is, it’s still horribly unusable in general, I’m afraid. I notice still a complete aversion to linking, one of the most fundamental things of the internet. Nothing is linked, not a single internal or external reference (and even the contents page is missing from the interwoven version). [There are tiny title links at the top of each page, most of which simply link to the page you're already on.] I want to read what “(4) “Hovercraft” has the same meaning as in the Hovercraft Act 1968″ says, or easily get from the index entry of “Belief” on (HTML) page 42 to its definition on (HTML) page… 2 (sorry, took a while to find it), or be trivially able to look up the definition of something from wherever it’s used, etc. [Oh and having two sets of page numbers is a recipe for mayhem.]

And, as you can probably guess I’m going to say, there’s no way to tell what effect this Bill would have on other Acts, except by painstakingly working it all out manually, which in this day and age is surely a bit embarrassing – I can tell you instantly the difference between two versions of any code I write, or what effect a patch (which is what an amendment is) would have on some code (or Act), but here I just have e.g. http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200809/cmbills/085/09085_iw/09085_iw_en_41.htm and it would be hours of work to see what effect this Bill actually had on the Equality Act 2006.

For interest, here’s something I knocked up and sent to you back in 2007: http://bitter.ukcod.org.uk/~matthew/bills/read – I realise this was a small bill with only short ENs, was done quickly, is a very long way from perfect, and with many other caveats, but it at least linked the reference to section 3 to section 3.

The side by side versions are useless.

Adobe displays the PDF a single page at the time. The Explanatory Notes are broken up by the Bill, and the Bill is broken up by the Explanatory Notes.

If I used the PDF to create a printed and bound version of the document (like the ones MPs have access to in Parliament) the side-by-side effect would work. But my printer only prints on one side of the page, and I don’t know how to bind documents. Nor should I have to buy a paper copy from the Stationary Office in order to read the legislation properly.

The HTML version is worse. Here, the explanatory note is often on a different webpage to the provision to which it relates. This version is far less accessible and frustrating to use. Try and find, for instance, the beginning of the EN to Schedule 16:

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200809/cmbills/085/volii/09085ii.142-148.html#j550s

A potential solution would be to produce separate PDFs for the Bill and the Notes as before, but retain the spacing and page numbering. At least then someone using the PDF for the Bill could simply cross-refer to the relevant page in the notes, and visa versa.

I think it’s a really great initiative – anything that makes the legislative process more accessible is definitely a very good thing. In particular, the Compact on Relations between Government and the Voluntary Sector sets out that documents should be available in accessible formats and in plain language, with descriptions of likely effects of the provisions being proposed, and this format is a big step towards that, which should be applauded. This is particularly true of Bills like this, which will be of major interest to the third sector and other representatives of vulnerable people.

I do have some issues with the format in this instance, however.

The pdf version is not very helpfully laid out. Because the contents pages run to an odd number of pages, the explanatory notes are not visible adjacent to the text they refer to if viewed on-screen in “two-up” view (which would surely be the best way of viewing it). This gets quite confusing. There may be a way of rectifying this locally from Acrobat Reader’s preferences, but I can’t find it, and I’m sure many other non-expert users like me would also have trouble finding it. As it is such a long document, it is much more suitable to viewing online than printing out – unfortunately, the format still drives the reader towards printing it out as it does not display helpfully in Acrobat Reader.

The HTML version also splits up the text rather unhelpfully, and does not allow for true “dual text” viewing. Even though it is in a different format to any previous Bill, the fact that it has been posted in the standard parliament.uk format (i.e. as linear text) negates the object of having it in dual text and confuses the reader immensely. This is compounded by the fact that the explanatory notes are numbered entirely differently to the clauses of the Bill, which means that the reader has to perform some mental gymnastics or have two browser windows open simultaneously in order to work out which line in the explanatory notes refers to which bit of the Bill text.

By far the most successful format is the interwoven format – this is the one which uses the potential of the online format to best effect with the ability to show and hide explanatory notes at the appropriate point in the text. However, even here, the numbering system for the explanatory notes gets in the way, and it is a bit annoying that the notes are only viewable as blocks, not as individual notes linking from the clause or sub-clause they refer to, which I would see as a more intuitive way of linking the Bill text to the notes. Also – do the notes have to be over the top of the original text (rather than next to it or below it) – this also feels a bit strange.

I’m sure others with a more advanced technical knowledge that me will have views on precisely how you could improve the way this Bill is presented. However, once again I’d like to say that I support and applaud what you’re trying to do, and as an interested user I’m happy to contribute and help to make it better.

Nick Drew – Policy Adviser
Commission for the Compact

Great idea.

So, instead of this (when the note for clause 1 has been expanded)

CLAUSE 1
en for clause 1 en for clause 1
en for clause 1 en for clause 1
clause 1 text clause 1 text
clause 1 text clause 1 text
clause 1 text clause 1 text

have this:

CLAUSE 1
clause 1 text clause 1 text en for clause 1 en for clause 1
clause 1 text clause 1 text en for clause 1 en for clause 1
clause 1 text clause 1 text

so they can both be read at once (otherwise there’s lots of scrolling up and down).