How to NOT have PostReply buttons with announcements

[mypointofview]

I put some announcements up in a forum and some users start posting around. I feel that an announcement should be a one-way communication and not invite for discussion.

Is there a trick to not have the PostReply button show -- only if it's an announcement?

I could lock the topic, but it would give not so good looking icons... I could replace the round "locked announcement" button with the regular "i" button and replace the rectangular "TopicLocked" icon with a one pixel white gif -- but then what about other topics where I need to show that a topic is locked?

Any ideas?

[Subz]

just change the permissions so users can't reply to the announcements

[mypointofview]

As I understand the system of permissions, the lowest layer is the forum where I can set the "User forum permissions". Inside the forum are topics. An announcement is just another form of a topic.

What I want to do is have the announcements (the ones with the "i" icon) inside a forum behave differently from any ordinary topics (the ones with the text sheet icon).

I have looked intensively into the code and I have managed to tweak it quite a bit. There are "if" statements which can filter Moderators, Administrators, Logged in users, Guests, and so forth. I have not seen any way to filter for announcements.

Subz, or anybody else for that matter, if you believe it can be done -- could you specify? Or perhaps a workaround?

It's a cosmetical design issue for me. Perhaps change the code for the button into just a line of text...

Martin