Johns Patches?

[Adam Myrow]

The problem with the long pauses after keystrokes is caused by some 
process or other trying to access the serial port that the Dectalk USB is 
on.  Apparently, the HAL daemon is one which does this.  I had heard that 
it has been deprecated.  You can easily reproduce the problem by trying to 
echo text to the serial port.  On my system, I have some code in my 
rc.local startup script which switches back and forth before restoring the 
settings.  Here is what I do.

#configure Speakup
#First, work around the annoying Dectalk bug.
echo "soft" >/sys/accessibility/speakup/synth
echo "dectlk" >/sys/accessibility/speakup/synth
/usr/local/bin/speakupconf load