Making flite more responsive and improving its pronounciation

[Sean McMahon]

On my Pentium 90, there is a segnificant delay between what shows up on screen
and when flite speaks it.  If there is a large chunk of text, there's a few
second delay between different parts of that chunk.Does this problem exist on
faster systems like a 400 P2 or something you would buy new today?  Can I
controll this behavior on my system and if so how?
Is there a way to change how flite pronounces words like a custome dictionary.
For example I'd like it to say debian with a short e and say certain words as
two seperate words.  If these customizations are possable, are they controlled
in speakup, speechd_up, speech dispatcher or flite.
Sean