more trivia: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms720892%28VS.85%29.aspx (wrong version of SAPI, but never mind)
You can get SAPI to speak a file (tested):
local com_status
local hObj = com.create_object("SAPI.SpVoice")
local SVSFIsFilename = 4
hObj.Speak(scriptfolder ++ ?"\speech.txt", SVSFIsFilename)
Said file can be XML or not. Numerous markup schemes, dunno what they do.
You can get it to speak out punctuation.
