Note that although the metadata files are designed to be easily read and writable by humans, they are also processed and written by various scripts. They can be automatically cleaned up when necessary. The structure and comments will be preserved correctly, although the order of fields will be standardised. (In the event that the original file was in a different order, comments are considered as being attached to the field following them). In fact, you can standardise all packages in a repository using a single command, without changing the functional content, by running:
ibdtselek