edit text in anti-aliased sans font

G'day!

I need to edit about a thesis' worth of text, and would like to do so
in the nicest way: I thought that I might try qemacs as it offers
anti-aliased text.

However, I'm stumped: how do I start it so that it uses Sans (or
helvetic) as the default font, and how do I turn on anti-aliasing
(sub-pixel rendering would be even better--I'm working on an lcd)

Thanks,

Johan