I'm confused about why this would be a problem, though. The majority of use cases I can think of for using fmt functions to render maps into strings would not be harmed in any way by presenting the map in sorted-key order. For my own use, such usage is mostly for debugging or logging purposes, in which case a sorted map is vastly preferable.

Given that the order of keys in a map is not guaranteed, I also wouldn't consider rendering them in a fixed order as "manipulation". The order of the keys is undefined, unimportant, program-wise. So presenting them in a certain order implies meaning (presumably there is one, whether it be creation order, LRU, or physical-memory layout). But if you know the keys are sorted before being printed, then you can continue to assume you don't know the actual order, or to put it another way, you can continue to suspend your disbelief about whether the keys are truly "unordered" in the system.

But to get back to practical concerns, I'm genuinely curious what harm you see from presenting the unordered keys in a predictable order that allows humans to get more use from the particular formatting?