9 out of 9 out of 50 or 100K users doesn't exactly constitute a referendum. Sorry, but in all the firms I've dealt with, only about 1/10th consider that a big deal. Most get over it rather quickly considering the overall benefits, but some can't whether stubborn or requirements dictate.
I wouldn't be surprised if it was in 09, but I wouldn't be surprised if it wasn't either. There are just too many holes that have more people clamoring.
YELP ! . . . .
whimper . . . whimper . . . whine-- EDIT --
You know, it is really not THAT trivial a deal. I would suggest that when deciding whether or not this is worthy of their divine intervention in some future release, AutoDesk consider the legal requirements that the annotation placed on the survey document, plat or easement MUST match the verbiage in the written description of said exhibit and that existing description language be used for adjoining boundary courses.
There is also very fundamental reasoning beyond aesthetics for using leading zeros. Being not only human, but a poor one for typing at that, I have made numerous omissions of one number of a pair when describing an angle. By using the leading zero I am assured if there be only one digit in the pair I have made one more such mistake, but without that convention I need to examine much closer to see whether or not my typing was true for a change. Being thus aware of my own shortcomings, if I see the same lonely character on someone else's work where most often there are two, I wonder if they might suffer the same typing deficiency as I.
Bottom line is there is ample reason to be skeptical of any document or description NOT displaying leading zeros and by making it impossible to do this within Civil 3D, Autodesk is giving us the choice of holding our nose and exploding the work outside of the program thus losing any future benefits of using the program in that drawing, or producing work that could appear to be in error if not out of compliance with accepted legal requirements.