[pm-h] mail processing after download

[rlharris at oplink.net]

On Fri, November 22, 2013 10:34 am "Todd Rinaldo" <toddr at cpanel.net> replied:
>
> On Nov 21, 2013, at 9:52 AM, rlharris at oplink.net wrote:
>
>> Regrettably, I have about a gigabyte of unread mail on the pop3 server
>> of my isp.  I do not wish to lose these messages.  I would like to
>> download this backlog of messages to my desktop machine, and sort
>> through them over the holidays.
>
> Your real problem is you're using pop3. If I remember correctly, pop3
> requires the server parse the entire file in order to send you the data.
> Can't you just fire up thunderbird or something and suck down and delete
> the data from the server?

Todd, I do not understand your point.  I have been using getmail to
download mail from the POP3 server of this ISP until a few months ago.
The only thing which changed is that, for several months now, I have
not been downloading mail.

And I do on occasion use Thunderbird.  But how would downloading with
Thunderbird differ from downloading with getmail?  getmail is
perfectly willing to download all of the messages from the server; but
with getmail it is possible to limit the number of messages downloaded
in a single session.

My primary concern is that the download does not destroy data such as
message numbers, which might be useful in culling out duplicate
messages.

P.S. The ISP offers both IMAP and POP3, but I know nothing about IMAP.

Russell