The Axiom Tutorial uses bitmap fonts, as LaTeX does by default when exporting to PDF.
This means the PDF looks horrible on screen, and is probably larger than it needs to be.
http://www.axiom-developer.org/zope/mathaction/AxiomInterface
There is also the Axiom Tutorial that is distributed with the Windows binary. See link under Start/Axiom
All of these look fine on my system. I am using Acrobat Reader 7. Download it from http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html
Older versions of Acrobat did not display all fonts properly.
Tim