Redirect Helvetica to Bitstream Vera Sans?

[Joseph Vella]

I've got most of my fonts looking good on my LCD display. Antialiasing is 
working, etc..   But there are many pages and emails that look horrible.  
Whenever I look at the source it has always been Verdana, Helvetica or Arial.  
All the work I've done that has worked to improve my fonts has been in 
~/.fonts.conf

Here is what I'm trying that doesn't seem to have any effect:

 <match target="pattern" name="family" >
 <test name="family" qual="any" >
   <string>Helvetica</string>
 </test>
 <edit mode="assign" name="family" >
   <string>sans-serif</string>
 </edit>
 </match>
 <match target="pattern" name="family" >
 <test name="family" qual="any" >
   <string>Verdana</string>
 </test>
 <edit mode="assign" name="family" >
   <string>sans-serif</string>
 </edit>
 </match>


In the same file I have antialias set to true, hinting set to true and 
hintstyle set to hintfull. Those all make a noticable difference.  I haven't 
put size requirements on antialiasing, but I don't feel that's my problem.  
Because increasing the size of the problematic fonts doesn't help.

I've tried the above redirects to Bitstream Vera Sans, but that also had no 
effect.

I did try to put Verdana and Arial fonts from a windows machine into ~/.fonts 
directory, followed up with a fc-cache -f command.  That had no effect.

Any ideas?  Also, where do I find what sans-serif is set to?

Joseph Vella