Copy Reference to Target does what it says: it copies all from reference to target.
One has to edit the newly created target to set the category, usually also the title and alias, and the contents.

Not a bug

is not a bug agree, but can be an improvement/new feature if the reference and target category are associated already

I agree it would be a logical​ I improvement

Sorry but it is a bug me think. Copy Reference to Target is not working and bugs out as shown in the screen-cast several times. https://www.screencast.com/t/aiQj8TGG9Ym Sometimes it works though so kind of weird. Happens both in FF and Chrome and 1 bug as well namely if you change the target language from Dutch to English the "copy Reference" button has disappeared. This is probably since English is set as main language for the site since changing to Dutch or to French it does not disappear. I am not quite sure why it disappears only with a change to Target language selector English https://www.screencast.com/t/pWfjrId0

not at my desk. will check your screencast tomorrow

I can't reproduce.

• your issue is totally unrelated to site or admin default languages

Additional to the first suggestion (automatically switch category of content to associated catagory in target language), you could do the same to menu items in a menu. Here it is even more critical I think because when trying to create a language frontpage, it's not even allowed to be in the same category (one can only have one primary page per menu)

@infograf768, if your last comment targeted to the poster of the screencast or to my original request? I agree with you this isn't a real bug. I do think in terms of user experience, it's confusing. So while it technically isn't a bug, you could see it as a UX bug. (just like "drive straight forward" also means you have to follow the curves of the road)

@JurgenG
The javascript using the 'simple' existing save2copy method is already extremely complex.
https://github.com/joomla/joomla-cms/blob/staging/media/com_associations/js/sidebyside-uncompressed.js
Although these improvements would be great to get in, we would need a very serious coder to work on such aspects.
Volunteers welcome.

@infograf768, here I stand by your side. Improvements are only as feasible as the people who can (skill/time) implement them. So a big congrats to this great feature. I yesterday demonstrated multilingual sites on our JUG and people were impressed about how great this improvement is.

Would be an improvement for sure, the question is: when? The usual situation is that we make a copy within the same category/menu. So when should the system behave different, is it when we have a multi language site? If it is only in that specific view or situation, then we are coupling extensions together and this will limit us in the future.

To keep a long story short, this is by far not an easy task if we will do it right.

@coolcat-creations This looks like it is being addressed in the GSOC project ??

no not really @brianteeman

Closing as features are not available for J3. Please review J4 and open a feature request if this is still a wanted feature.

Set to "closed" on behalf of @jwaisner by The JTracker Application at issues.joomla.org/joomla-cms/15206

this should not be closed!!!

it is a perfectly valid feature request and should be considered for joomla 4