Well, since I couldn't resolve the issues with using my doubletalk lt at boot for the time being, I decided to try espeakup. This was so easy!!! All I did was install espeakup, add speakup_soft start=1 to /etc/modules and reboot. Very nice!!! I'm also using espeak with orca and so far I'm extremely happy with it. In fact, when I logged in to gnome and orca started automatically and speech began, speakup, which was still reading some of the boot information, didn't even miss a beat and it stopped reading bootup information and began reading what I was typing immediately when I switched to a text console and started typing. It also doesn't show any kind of conflicts so far when using it along with brltty. It's true that it doesn't start speaking as early as would a hardware synth working from the kernel or initrd but it is working very impressively so far for me!!! -- Cheryl "Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also."
