-The parts of a multipart/alternative part are listed in the reverse
-order of their placement in the message. The listing therefore is
-in decreasing order of preference, as defined in RFC 1521.
+By default, the parts of a multipart/alternative part are listed in
+the reverse order of their placement in the message. The listing
+therefore is in decreasing order of preference, as defined in RFC
+2046. The
+.B \-prefer
+switch can be used (one or more times, in order of descending
+preference) to let MH know which content types from a
+multipart/alternative MIME part are preferred by the user, in order to
+override the default preference order. Thus, when viewed by
+.BR mhlist ,
+the ordering of multipart/alternative parts will appear to change when
+invoked with or without various
+.B \-prefer
+switches.
+The
+.B \-prefer
+switch is functionally most important for
+.IR mhshow ,
+but is also implemented in
+.B mhlist
+and
+.B mhstore
+to make common part numbering possible across all three programs.