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Another information stored in the project is the list of languages that this project knows about. GPS support any number of language, with any name you choose. However, advanced support is only provided by default for some languages (Ada, C and C++), and you can specify other properties of the languages through customization files (see Adding support for new languages).
By default, the graphical interface will only give you a choice of languages among the ones that are known to GPS at that point, either through the default GPS support or your customization files. But you can also edit the project files by hand to add support for any language.
Languages are a very important part of the project definition. For each language, you should specify a naming scheme that allows GPS to associate files with that language. You would for instance specify that all .adb files are Ada, all .txt files are standard text files, and so on.
Only the files that have a known language associated with them are displayed
in the Project View, or available for easy selection through the
File->Open From Project menu. Similarly, only these files are shown
in the Version Control System interface.
It is therefore important to properly setup your project to make these files
available conveniently in GPS, although of course you can still open any file
through the File->Open menu.
If your project includes some README files, or other text files, you should
add "txt" as a language (or any other name you want), and make sure that
these files are associated with that language in the Project properties
editor.
By default, GPS provides support for a number of languages. In most cases, this support takes the form of syntax highlighting in the editor, and possibly the Outline View. Other languages have advanced cross-references available.
All the supported languages can be added to the project, but you can also add your own languages as you need (either by editing the project files by hand, or by creating XML files to add GPS support for these languages, which will then show in the project properties editor graphically).