The only thing with that is that I would need to delete them each time from the newly generated list, which is a bit of a nuisance when looking at the diff list to work out what is still inconsistent.
The following extra bit worked well:
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rpm -qa --qf '%{N}\n' | sed '/^lib/d' | sort > allpackages_nolibs.txt
This has the important caveat that anything beginning with "lib" which is
not a library is not in the output either, the libreoffice suite for example!
I therefore don't recommend that you do this on the original list - generate it without the sed and then do the sed afterwards when creating you file for diff'ing.
So, the final method I used was:
copy /etc somewhere safe.
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rpm -qa --qf '%{N}\n' | sort > allpackages.txt
before migrating.
Then, after migrating:
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cat allpackages.txt | sed '/^lib/d' > allpackages_nolibs.txt
Install all the packages you think you need (including such things as libreoffice!), then:
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rpm -qa --qf '%{N}\n' | sed '/^lib/d' | sort | diff allpackages_nolibs.txt -
Use the output to see the things you missed, install them, and then try again (others are likely to be resolved when one package is spotted due to dependencies).
Use the reference /etc to get your settings back as they were.
Voila! All done

Thanks to everyone who posted for your help - this has proved a lot less painful than I expected. Note that the Mageia 4 64-bit installer automatically works out where your mount points were if you install to your existing disk (or, preferably just in case of trouble, a copy of it) and by default only wants to format / and /usr, not /home or /var, so it really is very straightforward unless you want to change volume sizes before moving to 64-bit.
Note: I actually have an old, smaller, /home on my OS drives so that I could make sure all was well before switching to my real /home by changing fstab. Not everyone will be able to do this and I strongly advise anyone else using this thread as a reference that, even if you can't back everything up for some reason, if you need to install with your real /home live then please copy it somewhere safe before installing 64-bit just in case bad things happen

Mandrake->Mandriva->Mageia starting in 2003. I really dislike another well-known distro starting with U.