What's the best way to tell a function about relevant fields in data frames

Hi list,

I have a function that detects saccadic eye movements in a time series
of eye positions sampled at a rate of 250Hz. ?This function needs
three vectors: x-coordinate, y-coordinate, trial-id. ?This information
is usually contained in a data frame that also has some other fields.
The names of the fields are not standardized.

head(eyemovements)

? ? ? ?time ? ? x ? ? ?y trial
51 880446504 53.18 375.73 ? ? 1
52 880450686 53.20 375.79 ? ? 1
53 880454885 53.35 376.14 ? ? 1
54 880459060 53.92 376.39 ? ? 1
55 880463239 54.14 376.52 ? ? 1
56 880467426 54.46 376.74 ? ? 1

There are now several possibilities for the signature of the function:

1. Passing the columns separately:

? ?detect(eyemovements$x, eyemovements$y, eyemovements$trial)

?or:

? ?with(eyemovements,
? ? ? ? detect(x, y, trial))

2. Passing the data frame plus the names of the fields:

? ?detect(eyemovements, "x", "y", "trial")

3. Passing the data frame plus a formula specifying the relevant
fields:

? ?detect(eyemovements, ~x+y|trial)

4. Passing a formula and getting the data from the environment:

? ?with(eyemovements,
? ? ? ? detect(~x+y|trial))

I saw instances of all those variants (and others) in the wild.

Is there a canonical way to tell a function which fields in a data
frame are relevant? ?What other alternatives are possible? ?What are
the pros and cons of the alternatives?

Thanks, Titus