Theming forum threads

Just to clarify the above, I want to style the list of posts in a forum thread... or more accurately wrap the list of posts in a forum thread with a header and a footer.

I managed to do something like this for the list of topics in a forum by overriding theme_forum_topic_list in my template.php

So the forum becomes something like:

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|Post new forum topic >>>                                           1 2 Next> Last |
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|Topic                                               Replies   Created   Last Reply|
| Topic A                                                                          |
| Topic B                                                                          |
| Topic C                                                                          |
| ...                                                                              |
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|Post new forum topic >>>                                           1 2 Next> Last |
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Unfortunately, forum does not provide anything like this for inside a thread, there is no theme_forum_thread_list to override! You can just override the forum list or the topic list, but not the lists of posts in the thread. Below is the code I used in my template.php for the forum topic list, in case anyone is interested:

/**
 * Format the topic listing.
 *
 * @ingroup themeable
 */
function mytheme_forum_topic_list($tid, $topics, $sortby, $forum_per_page) {
	global $forum_topic_list_header;
	
    if (user_access('create forum topics')) {
      $postlink = l(t('Post new forum topic >>>'), "node/add/forum/$tid");
    }
    else if ($user->uid) {
      $postlink = t('You are not allowed to post a new forum topic.');
    }
    else {
      $postlink = t('<a href="@login">Login</a> to post a new forum topic.', array('@login' => url('user/login', drupal_get_destination())));
    }

  $forum_pager_header = array(
    array('data' => $postlink, 'field' => NULL, 'colspan' => '3'),
	array('data' => theme('pager', NULL, $forum_per_page, 0), 'field' => NULL, 'colspan' => '2')
  );

  if ($topics) {

    foreach ($topics as $topic) {
      // folder is new if topic is new or there are new comments since last visit
      if ($topic->tid != $tid) {
        $rows[] = array(
          array('data' => theme('forum_icon', $topic->new, $topic->num_comments, $topic->comment_mode, $topic->sticky), 'class' => 'icon'),
          array('data' => check_plain($topic->title), 'class' => 'title'),
          array('data' => l(t('This topic has been moved'), "forum/$topic->tid"), 'colspan' => '3')
        );
      }
      else {
        $rows[] = array(
          array('data' => theme('forum_icon', $topic->new, $topic->num_comments, $topic->comment_mode, $topic->sticky), 'class' => 'icon'),
          array('data' => l($topic->title, "node/$topic->nid"), 'class' => 'topic'),
          array('data' => $topic->num_comments . ($topic->new_replies ? '<br />'. l(format_plural($topic->new_replies, '1 new', '@count new'), "node/$topic->nid", NULL, NULL, 'new') : ''), 'class' => 'replies'),
          array('data' => _forum_format($topic), 'class' => 'created'),
          array('data' => _forum_format(isset($topic->last_reply) ? $topic->last_reply : NULL), 'class' => 'last-reply')
        );
      }
    
	}
  }

  $output = '<div class = "forum_pager">' . theme('table', $forum_pager_header, NULL) . '</div>';
  $output .= theme('table', $forum_topic_list_header, $rows);
  $output .= '<div class = "forum_pager">' . theme('table', $forum_pager_header, NULL) . '</div>';

  return $output;
}