:The western and eastern variants are groupings of alphabet by the different Greek dialects. There should be more info in the article (or in a more specific article) about the early history of the Greek alphabet; see Jeffrey's cited article for info.   

 ==Greek for other languages  copyright statement== 

 To the extent that the text of this section is copied from my article "Character Codes for Greek: Problems and Modern Solutions", I authorize its use in Wikipedia under the usual Wikipedia license.  Stavros Macrakis, 25 November 2005.