[rapjr9]

You can't download an entire work, you can only view HTML pages of chapters. You can indeed read the texts online but the site seems designed to prevent downloading an entire text, try Project Gutenberg or the Internet Archive first if you want a local copy.

"Q: Why all the short files? I want to download the entire book in one file! A: Sorry. The short files are for technical reasons which greatly reduce the cost of hosting the site. Newer books typically have a one-file text-only version, which is optimized for screen reader software. Look for the links on the index pages that say 'Text'"

There is no text file for the I-Ching on sacred-texts, if you want to download it here's the archive.org versions:

https://archive.org/details/I-Ching

Here's the James Legge translation of the Tao Tey King in one text file:

https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/216/pg216.txt

[huytersd]

It would be great if someone could make a torrent of all of these in one go.

[_a_a_a_]

Or you could buy it, that's what the site's for IIRC.

[huytersd]

I guess but it’s $127 for information I can read in its entirety for free already. I’m sure if they had a more nominal price around $10-20 they would get a lot more purchases. After all it’s really an aggregation of existing texts.

[_a_a_a_]

> I can read in its entirety for free already

then why consider paying?

[huytersd]

To support a compilation effort? I just don’t think that effort is worth how much they’re charging for it.

[_a_a_a_]

I basically said 'why pay if it's free?', Not 'why not pay?'. It's free to read as you have stated, yet you want to own it, yet you don't want to pay any significant amount for it. I suspect that if they charged $10 for it you still wouldn't be happy.

[wolverine876]

You don't need to use their website, but these people have put in a lot of work doing something for the world. Instead of putting our efforts into bring them down, let's spend it helping them or doing similar good.

[cykros]

Honestly, this site has been up for at least 20 years. I suspect the breaking into small files made a lot more sense when they first launched than it does now, given the costs of bandwidth.

Because really, when was the last time you heard someone quibble over bandwidth of text or pdf's?