okay so here is the deal thanks to steve for giving me the tip on the kernel revision required for running the latest from speakup. in the three part instruction set for festival and speakup it says that when i do a CVS check of the speakup software i will get a speakup directory in the /usr/src dir. i do not i do however when i extract the speakup-modifications file. so, how do i apply the patches to speakup when speakup doesn't exist outside of the kernel? i don't think there is an installation script for the speakup-modifications.