[h-e-w] Downloading mail.

[G Anna]

Dear All,

Today I had a very unpleasant experience with downloading mail.  I
kindly request you all to give me some advice and tips so that this
wouldn't happen again.

I use Gnus 5.8.8 to read mails.  Today when I started downloading I
had some 100 mails to download.  Since my connection was very slow it
took around one hour to download 90 mails.  After that the connection
got cut. <sigh>

But since Gnus was still waiting (without reporting that the
connection was lost) I immediately dialed up again.  But Gnus refused
to recognise the new connection and it was not downloading.

So I stopped Gnus and restarted it.  To my dismay it started to
download from the beginning. (from mail 1 instead of mail 90) ;-(

So I once again stopped Gnus and decided that the downloaded mails are
enough.  So I used the web interface of my mail account and deleted
all my mails (thinking that I would lose only around 10 mails.) 

After that when I came back and looked at the Gnus, to my horror I
found that no new mails are there!  Which means I have lost all the
100 mails.  Which also means that I have lost all the on-line time as
well.  Which also (again) means that an evening of frustration and
self-hatred.  [Nobody can understand or feel the way I feel right now.
I feel like banging my head on the walls, till I bleed and faint.]

psst.

Now I don't understand why Gnus doesn't download the mail one at a
time.  Why doesn't it download one mail, delete it from pop3 account,
then download next and so on?  That way if my connection got cut, I
can continue from where I left.

Or is there any other tool that has this property? I am sorely
disappointed with Gnus as far as this downloading mails are
concerned. I am on Windows ME platform. And my GNU Emacs version is
20.7.1.

If you have any other advice on this, please give me.  I am extremely
in need of such information.

Thank you all for your time.

Cheers,
anna

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