According to http://drupaldocs.org/api/head/function/system_theme_settings I got the impression that defining a <themename>_settings() (along with <themename>_features()?) function would allow extra fields to be inserted on admin/themes/settings/<themename> page but that doesn't seem to be working for me.

I put _features() and _settings() in template.php but nothing seems to be happening. I'm probably just overlooking something obvious at the moment.

What I'd like to do is add an option to allow re-ordering of the different properties of node and comment through the settings. So that the site admin could define an order of title, submitted, terms, content, links... or title, content, submitted, terms, etc without having to create a new theme or mess with .tpl.php files.

Anyone have suggestions?