I didn't quite get "disable" as that sounds more like setting the input type to disabled, and not the functionality. When i implemented it, thats pretty much what happened from my recollection.
For the time being, bouncing back and forth between Draggable and sortable, requires me to destroy the current and then reapply the opposing events.
I was thinking that you could do something like:
$item.draggable("pause"); or something so that way i wouldnt have to rebind events EVERY time i did this.
what i was doing was stuff like:
//to toggle off drag and on sort.
if($item.data("draggable")) $item.draggable("destroy");
if(!$item.parent().data("sortable")) $item.parent().sortable();
Here is my example: http://jsfiddle.net/7k2HJ/
I just keep thinking that you should be able to pause draggable and sortable or something like this. If not its ok. I just had a thought. Maybe i was thinking about it wrong.
Thanks for input everyone
EDIT:
I can enable and disable the controls separately which is good, but if i disable the parent sortable object and try to reenable the draggable (on the children) it fails. there is no error, but the all controls are disabled and cant be re-enabled. There seems to be overlapping ground, possibly because the contain is "disabled"