Speech on XP

[curry]

This is a two-part question: First, does the speech external work on 
Windows XP? I assumed it doesn't, because the site for MS Speech only 
mentions up to W2K for the SAPI. But I don't have XP yet to try it. 
(If it does, I would be very happy to hear that and sorry for the 
wrong assumption, which is based totally on the MS information I 
could find.)

But if it doesn't work, then what options do we have to implement 
speech pretty easily on XP? I'm open and have looked for all kinds of 
solutions, whether a DLL that can be called with Rev's ability in 
calling DLL's, or a command-line solution, or any kind of Windows 
scripting similar to the kind of thing we would do with AppleScript 
(I have no idea if there is such a thing), or a helper application 
that can  be called in some way.

If XP offers anything that previous Windows didn't, it would be fine 
to use one thing for XP and the speech external for other Windows, 
although of course the fewer things used the better. Any ideas? I 
would really appreciate it--I have spent some time looking around but 
no real luck.

Curry