small speakup and debian issues

[Nick Gawronski]

Hi, I am using speakup with debian etch with 2.4.18 kernel as found at 
people.debian.org/~shane and find that if I type a capital letter the 
dectalk's speech drops pitch and I need to turn off and on the express 
before pitch is restored the way I like it and the rate.  Has anyone else 
had this similar problem and will there be a fix for it?  I also find that 
if I am reading large passages of text speakup will suddenly stop reading 
and I will need to wait and keep pressing the number 7 if I want to read 
what has been displaied.  I sometimes use grml with software speech and find 
that speakup spells everything instead of speaking it and rather slowly. 
Reading on the grml list It looks like the prempt option in processer type 
and features is causing this problem.  Is there a way that speakup could be 
written where that setting would not effect speech?  Does the debian kernel 
for speakup include software speech support?  I also found a debian package 
called kernel-patch-speakup that is the source for the patch but when I 
tried to patch it into the standard debian kernel the patch failed.  Does 
anyone on this list manage that package and could it be updated?