--- speechd.orig	2004-07-26 14:52:06.000000000 +0200
+++ speechd		2004-06-01 13:03:38.000000000 +0200
@@ -255,26 +255,35 @@
   while(1) {
     #open( FIFO, "<$fifo" ) || die "can't read from $fifo $!\n";
     my $line = 0;
-		my $text;
+    my $text;
     while ($text = <FIFO>)
     {
-			next if $text eq "\n";
+      next if $text eq "\n";
+
       $line++;
       print "Line: $line\n";
       print "Input:  $text";
-      # escape backslashes and quotes
-      $text =~ s/(["\\])/\\$1/g;
-      # Strip single quotes so contractions are treated as single words by string conversion 
-      # & convert "_" characters to " ".
-      $text =~ tr/([_'])/ /d;
-      # convert to lowercase so string substitution isn't case sensitive
-      $text = lc ($text);
-      #Thanks to Abigail in #Perl on EFNet for assistance w/ the followoing line.
-      #This does the string conversion.
-      $text =~ s/(\w+)/$wordsub{$1} || $1/eg;
+
+      if ( $text !~ m/^ *\(.+\)/ ) { # a string delimited by parenthesis is treated as a command (as is)
+        # escape backslashes and quotes
+        $text =~ s/(["\\])/\\$1/g;
+        # Strip single quotes so contractions are treated as single words by string conversion 
+        # & convert "_" characters to " ".
+        $text =~ tr/([_'])/ /d;
+        # convert to lowercase so string substitution isn't case sensitive
+        $text = lc ($text);
+        #Thanks to Abigail in #Perl on EFNet for assistance w/ the following line.
+        #This does the string conversion.
+        $text =~ s/(\w+)/$wordsub{$1} || $1/eg;
+        # remove trailing newline
+        $text =~ s/\n$//;
+        # insert the string in a festival "SayText" command
+        $text = '(SayText "'.$text.'")'."\n";
+      }
+
       if ($handle) {   # Sanity checks are always nice...
         print "Output: $text";
-        print($handle '(SayText "',$text,'")') or die "Could not write to Festival ($!)\n";
+        print($handle $text) or die "Could not write to Festival ($!)\n"; 
         recv($handle, $info, 200, 0);
         print "Festival: $info\n";
       } else {