Law Typesetting

Vision

To build an active community engaged in improving Indian laws through use of a model law typesetting software and to promote legal research and thinking.

Principles and guidelines of writing law

The software should follow these principles and guidelines.

• Structured
• Consistent
• Citable
• Portable

Web presentation

• HTML5 and Javascript
• Resolve cross references and hyperlink them
• Mark amendments
• Offer timeline of amendments
• Pop-up definitions
• Table of contents
• Versioning
• Constitutionality References?

Print typesetting

• LaTeX PDF output
• Word/ODT

Backend

1. XML Standard: http://www.akomantoso.org/

• Laws will be written in XML using Akomantoso standard as stored as valid XML documents.
• Backend engine will process these documents and convert them into HTML and LaTeX code.

2. Version Control

• Each version of law will be versioned.
• Front-end should be able to list differences between different versions based on entities which changed. This is different from doing a regular line-based diff which tells a user text lines which changed.

3. Handle Amendment Bills

• Amendment Bills will be passed by the parliament while existing versions are getting worked upon by the community. A separate branch in version control will keep track of the latest version of the law passed in parliament.