Parsing periodic emails and broadcasting as ROS topic?

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Does anybody have experience or thoughts about how one might go about parsing periodic (sent in 30/60 second or longer interval) emails and then broadcasting their clear text contents (or .txt attachment) as a ROS topic? I'm more interested in the mechanics behind the ROS<-->email server bit as parsing clear text and building my ROS msgs won't be difficult.

For the curious, I have a set of GPS trackers that transmit GPS messages/sentences via the Iridium SBD system. The SBD (Short Burst Data) messages arrive to me in the form of clear text emails containing what ever GPS data I want (NMEA sentences, or custom messages).

My initial thoughts:

1. The VMime library for C++ appears to provide full IMAP/POP/SMTP and TLS/SSL support. A ROS node could be written that periodically checks a given IMAP inbox, and then publishes the GPS data upon receipt of a new message.
2. Write standalone C++/Python program to query email server and save email body contents containing GPS strings as time stamped text files, which could then be parsed and broadcast by a ROS node.