Well, I have a new problem. Before I reinstalled my os, I had no real problems with hammer. Now, the text the numbers use in the 2d views are nearly unreadable.
It occurred to me earlier today that I haven't really used hammer recently since before my reinstallation. I did it because I'd gotten a new gfx card (ATI Radeon HD 4670, was a nVidia Geforce 7600 something-or-other before).
So, after messing around with all the settings available to me in the ATI control panel, I can only assume that ATI cards have some sort of issue with rendering the text used in the 2D views, since the lettered text is distorted the same way.
Also, this is a totally biased opinion because this is the first ATI card I've really used.
Another also; the distortion on the numbers stay because their size remains constant regardless of the zoom level, and there are no settings in hammer to modify text size.
I just remembered a thread on my mapping forums, where about two ATI users had the same problem. Maybe you could do something like to check the 'Alternate Pixel Center' box in the ATI Control Center. That helped for one of these guys.
Excuse me for being rude. I'm usually drunk while posting.