It would be nice if the user could set in node reference which fields of the referenced node she would display in the referring node. Now our options are limited to title (with or without link) or teaser or full node.
There are solutions to solve this problem, but they are not simple: theming (there is an example in the book Drupal Multimedia), coding (Computed field), Node Reference Formatters module – looks to be nice, but you should theme to have the desired fields displayed, Field reference module (D5 only), Node reference views module (why should we load views?) etc.
IMHO the simple, user-friendly solution would be this: one can choose a display option: “custom” and then select the desired field(s) with simple ceckboxes.
Well, it is easy to say but hard to do. Isn’t it?
Ps: I posted it as an issue.
Ps2: I haven’t used the mentioned modules yet.