Making speech synthesisers speak a particular way

[Michael Whapples]

Hello,
I know that some of this is slightly off topic, but I know that there
are people with knowledge of this and it is still sort of relevant for
such a list.

I am looking at adding speech output to a program I am writing, and am
wondering about the best way to achieve the style of speech (eg. pauses
in the correct places, correct punctuation level spoken, etc) for this.
I know of (heard of, but don't know much about) things like SSML, would
this be what I need to look at? Also I like the idea of using systems
like speech-dispatcher as it would support many synths but only needing
me to interface my code to one system, but would speech-dispatcher (and
as I want it to be cross platform useable, I suppose sapi as well) be
good enough to maintain the precise spoken style I need/want for this?
Might it be better to work with one synth espeak and use the control
systems provided there?

From
Michael Whapples