The Gild Resource view is the "control station" for all of your programming tasks. It is a hierarchical tree view much like the MS Windows Explorer. On your first run of Gild, this view will appear on the far left-hand side of your screen. This is where you will manage all of the resources of your tasks. Resource is an abstract term that describes one of three things: a project; a folder; or, a file.
Project A project is the highest-level resource for any particular programming task. It can hold any number of the other two resources. You will probably find it useful to create a separate project for each of your Java assignments. Folder Folders are just like operating system folders. They are hierarchical structures that may contain files or other folders. You probably won't make use of folders in any of your initial projects. File Files are just like operating system files. They are the lowest level of the resource hierarchy. They will hold your source code, and your compiled programs. They won't hold any other resources. Each resource in the GILD Resource View is represented by a single label. The label is composed of an icon and a short string of text. The string is typically just the name of a particular resource (i.e. "MyJavaProgram.java"). The image, located to the left of the string, is particular to the type of resource. Projects and folders typically have the same image as shown above. The image for a file will vary depending on the type of file. Java files will have the same image as shown above. Various smaller images or strings, called decorators, may appear over a resource label depending on the state of that resource. These decorations will be discussed throughout this document as appropriate.
There are many things that can be done within the Gild Resource View. These will be discussed in the section "Accomplishing Common Tasks".
