elisp help needed

[Richard Riley]

I was wondering if some elisp wizard familiar with gnus might help me ,
from googling around I have the following code block. Notice the
&user-date and the gnus-user-format-function-a.

,----
| (defun gnus-user-format-function-a (header)
|    "Test dynamic color"
|    (let  ((date-time (format-time-string "%m/%d" (safe-date-to-time
| (mail-header-date header)))))
|       (if (string= date-time (format-time-string "%m/%d"))
| (propertize date-time 'face 'my-inbox 'my-inbox 'my-inbox
|                 'gnus-face t)
|     (propertize date-time 'face 'my-inbox-unread 'my-inbox-unreade 
'my-inbox-unread
|                 'gnus-face t))))
| 
| 
| (setq  gnus-user-date-format-alist
|            '(
|            ((gnus-seconds-today) . "Today, %H:%M")
|              ((+ 86400 (gnus-seconds-today)) . "Yesterday, %H:%M")
|              (604800 . "%A %H:%M") ;;that's one week
|              ((gnus-seconds-month) . "%A %d")
|              ((gnus-seconds-year) . "%B %d")
|              (t . "%B %d '%y"))) ;;this one is used when no other does match
| 
| 
| (setq gnus-summary-line-format  "%U%R:%ua:%~(max-right 17)~(pad-right 
17)&user-date;  %~(max-right 20)~(pad-right 20)n %B%s\n")
| 
| 
|  (setq
|           gnus-sum-thread-tree-false-root ""
|           gnus-sum-thread-tree-indent " "
|           gnus-sum-thread-tree-root "✪ "
|           gnus-sum-thread-tree-leaf-with-other "├► "
|           gnus-sum-thread-tree-single-leaf "╰► "
|           gnus-sum-thread-tree-vertical "│")
| 
`----

Could some kind soul show me how best I could propertize the output from
the logic in the gnus-user-date-format-alist  as is done in the
user-format-function-a?

regards

r.