has anyone written something like this? I'm getting complaints that
each time I deliver a new version of the system I'm working on
(ongoing development) the column names are in a different order due to
modification which makes them more difficult to browse.

Ideally what I had in mind was to always sort the fields so that the
Pkey was first, then secondary keys (in alphabetic order), then all
others (alphabetic order).
But any way to return the fields to a predictable order would be sufficient.