The OOXML glossary (g: namespace) provides Word’s building blocks system — reusable content fragments that include AutoText entries, document parts, and Quick Parts. Uniword models the complete glossary structure.

1. Building Blocks

Building blocks are reusable document fragments stored in a glossary document part. Each building block has:

Name

A human-readable name for the building block.

Gallery

The category it belongs to (headers, footers, cover pages, etc.).

Category

A sub-category within the gallery.

Description

A description shown in the building block organizer.

Type

Whether the block is a document, template, or gallery item.

OOXML defines several gallery types that correspond to the Word Quick Parts organizer:

  • Custom — User-defined building blocks

  • AutoText — Classic AutoText entries

  • Cover pages — Pre-designed cover page layouts

  • Bibliographies — Bibliography formatting templates

  • Equations — Equation display templates

  • Quick parts — General-purpose reusable content

  • Footer — Footer designs

  • Header — Header designs

  • Page numbers — Page number layouts

  • Table of contents — TOC formatting templates

  • Tables — Table design templates

  • Watermarks — Document watermark overlays

3. Template Structure

A glossary document part (word/glossary/document.xml) has the same structure as a regular document:

# Glossary document contains building blocks
glossary = package.glossary_document
glossary.building_blocks.each do |block|
  puts block.name
  puts block.gallery
  puts block.category
  # Each block has its own body with paragraphs, tables, etc.
  block.body.paragraphs.each { |p| puts p.text }
end

4. Building Block Entries

Each building block entry is wrapped in a <w:docPart> element that contains:

Properties

Name, gallery, category, description, type, and behavior flags.

Body

The actual document content (paragraphs, runs, tables, images).

The body content uses the same WordProcessingML elements as regular document content.

5. Usage

Building blocks are typically used through the document elements system:

  • Uniword bundles 240 document element templates across 30 locales

  • These templates are stored as YAML definitions and can be loaded into glossary parts

  • The uniword resources export command can extract building blocks from a Word installation

See Document Elements Catalog for the complete list of bundled templates.