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Drafting notes

Drafting notes are intended to be explanatory text in a generated document to assist someone to use that document rather than forming part of the contract wording itself. This might be useful if
Contract Express Author
 is used to create a first draft of a contract that is then completed by someone directly editing the draft in Word.
The keyword “note”, which can be applied to a span, is used. This tells the system that the span contents are to be considered a note under the control of the db_output_notes parameter.
Note icon.
The db_output_notes parameter determines how the notes are to be displayed in the generated document. Change this setting in the Document section of the profile applied on the questionnaire to one of three options:
  • None
    : no drafting notes will be displayed - useful if notes are for Authors' use only
  • Conditional
    : applies the business rule on notes to determine if they should be displayed - useful for traditional drafting notes
  • All
    : all notes are displayed in the generated document - useful if document is used as a training exercise for
One usage of the “note” span would be around a footnote reference, like this:
Some wording that needs a drafting note.[
Note1
]
This has the effect that the reference to the footnote is only included if notes are appearing in the generated document. If the reference is removed then the footnote itself is not displayed.
However, the note span could be applied to any wording text not just footnote references.
Some wording that needs a drafting note.[
Note
Here is some in situ guidance text.]
The “note” span always has an associated condition, which the author may choose to specify explicitly.
Some wording that needs a drafting note.[
Note if Jurisdiction IS "United Kingdom"
 Here is some in situ guidance text.]
If no condition is explicitly given then a default condition is applied that is true if the most closely enclosing span is not evaluable.
[
Jurisdiction IS "United Kingdom"
 Some wording that needs a drafting note.[
Note2
&cd;
is equivalent to
[
Jurisdiction IS "United Kingdom"
 Some wording that needs a drafting note.[
Note if not known(Jurisdiction IS "United Kingdom")3
&cd;
The db_output_notes parameter that controls inclusion of notes in the generated document takes the value ‘none’ (default) meaning all note spans will be removed, ‘conditional’ meaning evaluate associated condition on the note span to determine whether to include it, and ‘all’ meaning include all those not already excluded by some parent span being excluded.
This same mechanism can be used to support variable guidance as drafting notes, for example:
{var}[
Note if not known(var) 4
]
If you look at the footnote text for this last example, you will notice that it relies upon another new feature in SR2 which is the support for mark-up in footnotes.
____________________________
[1] Example guidance note.
[1] More guidance.
[1] More guidance.
[1] {Attribute(var, “guidance”)}

This article applies to:

  • Product: Contract Express