Custom GMail Vacation Auto-Responder (Using IMAP)

I've always found deeper-knowledge articles elsewhere, but your community is the most co-operative and your forum article-editor is the best.I'm a Systems Engineer who works in an Anonymous Company. My indirect supervisor (my boss's boss) wanted to have a custom GMail Vacation Auto-Responder that would:Have a list of involved GMail accounts.2- Connect to GMail and identify unread messages.3- Auto-Reply to the senders of those unread messages with a custom auto-reply template.Well, this could have been done easily using the GMail Atom Feed url... but since the atom only provides access to the very latest 20 unread messages, it could not be used for that purpose.

So, I had only one of two choices, either use POP3 or IMAP. Of course, IMAP was the right candidate for many considerations, the most prudent of which is its resourceful command-set. I had to design the tool (a Windows Service in this case) with minimal data transfer/session time in mind, because Google becomes touchy when you over-use IMAP with its servers.I was new to the whole Socket/IMAP thing, so I had to get my feet wet. I designed the tool, planned it well, and thought the best work-flow would go like this: Well, my boss's boss had some comments - that he never really declared which makes them IMPLICIT :D :D :D - on the way the tool works, but he decided to spell the word only when I announced that my proto-type code is done. He is not supposed to be technically involved - I mean into code - although he really involves himself into bits and bytes, and he has not even seen the code, not to mention that he might not fully understand it, but yet somehow he declared that what I did was a waste of time.[code]