The problem with the combining diacriticals is that they don't combine with the Basic Greek character set. So you wind up with the diacritical over an empty space and then the letter. But quite correct, the marks are a later innovation. Doing without is jsut fine for the Classical era. Byzantines and late Hellenistics might want them, but then they need some different words too.

And thanks to Damon for putting the links in the header. I was going to do that myself, but was rather daunted by the code. My HTML skills are rudimentary and I didn't want to screw anything up.