I looked in the aptitude docs and so far haven't found what p and i mean next to the list of packages anyone know? If my synth won't recognize pitch changes, then perhaps speakup could be modified to anounce cap+ letter, something like that. Finally, I tried to change the rate for speakup yesterday and nothing happened. It worked the day before. When I tried to enter the rate, my synth spoke a lot of escape sequences and garbage. Between the time when rate change worked and now, I did reboot a couple of times and do one shutdown, and speakup is now the default kernel so talking now comes up at boot time. Any ideas?