From: G_ F_ <8si.greg@...>
Date: 2009-08-24T09:52:01+09:00
Subject: Re: retrieving Yahoo mail with Net::IMAP

Tadeusz Bochan wrote:
> Now there's a thing. I never heard of WWW::Mechanize, but there's many a 
> time I could have done with it. Thanks a lot for that tip, there's a 
> bunch of things I need to revisit now.
> Btw, I'm very disappointed with Google for not having an export mail 
> facility, I'm usually a fan of Google and everything was looking sharp 
> and smart with Gmail, but I think they dropped the ball with that one. 
> It seems such an obvious feature to provide.

Well, you could write your own using Ruby and IMAP. Filtering and 
searching is not as straightforward as on a regular IMAP server, but you 
can create a filter in your gmail account, and then use that as a search 
criteria for the IMAP session. I haven't checked, but you might be able 
to tell it to use records over n days old. Or, just list the entire 
contents of your inbox via Ruby and IMAP and selectively retrieve then 
delete the ones you want to archive.

The RSS mechanism also supports the filters too, so if you need the 
speed and can figure out a filter that does what you want, then you can 
have gmail do the heavy lifting based on a RSS request, then follow it 
up with the IMAP that actually transfers the messages.

And, you have to remember, Google uses gmail as an enticement. They're 
putting ads in your face that are tailored to the content of your email. 
I'm sure they're also gathering demographics and who knows what else 
from mining the messages. Not providing archiving means you have to go 
there to read the messages, even the old stuff. It also means they 
continually get a better impression of who you are based on the messages 
you keep vs. delete. They have no real inducement to make it easy for us 
to move our mail out of their space.
-- 
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