Enable sort but disable events on th

gdj

I would like to trigger sort on a specific element within a th, not the entire th element. Is there a way to allow sorting via the API but avoid it being triggered by the entire th area?

More generally, I want to create all the ui elements myself and trigger the sorting etc. by adding events to elements in my own html. To this end I've used the dom parameter with empty string. And I've added event handlers for sorting. Problem is, the built-in events are is still there.

I am happy to pay for support since I have more complex problems to deal with and I've not been able to create relevant examples with static html on live.datatables. But I thought I'd give this question a try first. Finally: thanks for a great product!