jQuery Grid Plugin - jqGrid

Actually I figured out a way to do this by leaving the field as editable in the COLMODEL and in the onSelectRow I set a global variable (edit_id)  and then when I call the editrow method I pass the function oneditfunc which according to the doc is "oneditfunc: fires after successfully accessing the row for editing, prior to allowing user access to the input fields. The row's id is passed as a parameter to this function."

In that function I derived the ID's of the column that has the code I do not want them to edit and set the disabled attribute.  I also set the focus to the next editable field.   This way it is still available in the Add form but is disabled for inline updates. Below is some sample code.  

 onSelectRow: function(id){
         if(id && id !== lastSel){
            if (lastSel != "")
            {  
               jQuery('#grid').restoreRow(lastSel);   
            }    
            lastSel=id;
         }
        edit_id = id;  
       jQuery('#grid').editRow(id, true, oneditfunc);
   },

function oneditfunc() {  
  var col_id1 = '#' + edit_id + '_COMM_CODE';
  var col_id2 = '#' + edit_id + '_COMM_NAME';
 //  alert(col_id1);
   $(col_id2).focus();
   $(col_id1).attr("disabled","disabled");
}