Many known bugs. * The spelling/punctuation modes of my favourite synthesizer don't work. Speakup uses it's own very simple spelling and punctuation substitution and doesn't allow the TTS to use it's own user-specified rules. * It doesn't work in UTF-8 UTF-8 should work as long as you only use characters encountered in the basic ASCII, so English should work. But Speakup doesn't really support UTF-8 in any way (nor it can, there is no UTF-8 support inside the kernel -- just workarounds targeted at visuall interpretation; the kernel virtual terminal drivers contain many bariers for accessibility). * I can't switch synthesizers on fly The way the interface Speakup -- Speech Dispatcher is designed, this is not possible. You can switch them statically in Speech Dispatcher's configuration though. If you use Speakup's identification "*:speechd-up:*" you can even choose a synthesizer specifically for Speakup. * Any other more advanced thing doesn't work or something is too slow or ... There are many problems with how this interface is done and with how Speakup is designed. It's probably much better to use Speakup with a hardware synthesizer, if you have the possibility. Speakup was not designed with user space software synthesis in mind and the necessary changes would probably be too difficult now. There were many important design decisions made which are very reasonable for hardware synthesizers, but they just don't mix well with software synthesis. On the other hand, experience shows people still find this interface to software speech synthesis useful, mostly because of lack of anything else. That's the reason why we provide this application and we will try to help you if you have problems or questions. If you are looking for a software speech synthesis solution, it's probably better to look into Emacs and it's interfaces speechd-el or Emacspeak. As of May 2005, we don't know about any good screen reader that would be useful with software synthesis, but that might change. PLEASE don't let this document discourage you in REPORTING BUGS that are not listed here. It might be something we *are* able to fix and other user's might appreciate it. You can report bugs on .