This is a very delayed answer to an old question, but there is now a $zconvert mode in IRIS that will do this for you:
> write $zconvert("Árvore", "A")
Arvore
Hello Alan, we are lacking in documentation that explains what each of those menu items do. I logged a GitHub issue here to add that: https://github.com/intersystems/git-source-control/issues/296
You mention having an existing application with a lot of code already in source control that you would like to migrate to Git. What I might do for this situation is initialize a new Git repository and copy all the files from your older source control system into the repo. You can then configure git-source-control to use this new repository for source control. The "Import All" option will import the files from this new repository into IRIS.
In the meantime, here's a quick and dirty explanation of the options you mention:
- Status: outputs the results of "git status" to the source control output
- Settings: opens a web page where you can configure git-source-control settings
- Launch Git UI: opens a web page where you can perform basic Git commands graphically
- Push to remote branch: equivalent of "git push"
- Fetch from remote: equivalent of "git fetch"
- Pull changes from remote branch: equivalent of "git pull", plus a call to the pull event handler
- Export All: exports all newly changed items in IRIS to the Git repository
- Export All (Force): exports all items in IRIS to the Git repository, including those with older timestamps
- Import All: imports all items in the Git repository to IRIS if the version in IRIS is outdated
- Import All (Force): imports all items in the Git repository to IRIS
In older versions, trying to run "do $i(a)" would throw a <SYNTAX> error. You could instead use "if $i(a)" or "set a = $i(a)" to do the same thing. The "do $i(a)" was added with IRIS 2019.1 because it's a nicer-looking syntax. So you can treat them as identical, and the only reason to care either way is if you want to write code that is backwards-compatible with older Caché / IRIS versions.