Hi Bruce,
I'm using Draftsight as well (latest version), we are currently using PADS 9.41 and I haven't had any issues importing text from a dxf. I have had to change the text to use a line width to gerber as it will come in at a line width of 0. Another thing I've done if I don't want to use the default PADS font is to explode the text in Draftsight first so that it will come in as a drawn element instead of text, to do this just select the text and type explodetext and hit enter. Hope this helps.
-Travis
