In a file system -- any file system I've used (CP/M, DOS, Mac, Windows, Unix) -- copying an object places an identical copy of it in the destination; now there are two of them. Moving an object places the object in the destination and removes it from the source location; now there's only one object (in the destination). It's an old and familiar concept...
But file systems also have something that you also should be familiar with, namely
links.
Windows and Unix (including MacOS X) file systems support linking of files as aliases ("shortcuts" in Windows, "symbolic links"/"symlinks" in Unix).
Delete the shortcut, but don't delete the file.
Unix semantics also support something called a "hard link" (really, just a "link"), where two file names point to the same "real" file. As opposed to the symlink, you can't see which is the original, because neither is the original.
To continue with your analogy, Lightroom has the
Library, in which the master images are referenced or stored, depending on your preferences. The images in the collections are merely such shortcuts or symlinks to the "real" image.
This doesn't seem to work within LR 1.1 (unless, again, this is entirely a RTFM sort of problem).
It's more of a "take a tutorial" kind of problem.
"Moving" an image from one collection to another is actually copying it. But when the image is removed from the first collection, it is also removed from the second...and then it ends up in purgatory for a while -- the "Already In Library" collection (pseudo collection? virtual collection?).
That's because it's still in the library, just not in any collection. You can add it back to a collection at a later time.
Also, the picture isn't removed from one collection when you delete it from another. This seems to be a misconception based on your use of hierarchical sorting of your images.
When you look at a parent collection, it will display the image references for
all its children. Remove the reference, and yes, it's gone.
In terms of your file system experience, consider looking at a parent collection as typing "ls -R collection" in Unix, or "dir /s" in MS-DOS/Windows cmd.
These results are kinda counter-intuitive.
They're not counter-intuitive. They are merely different to what you're used to doing.
A common saying is that "the only intuitive interface is the nipple" - but even using that is a skill the baby needs to learn.
Surely there must be a way to move these objects in that older-fashioned, file-system-like sense of "move." I can't imagine why not have such a feature in a database program, which presumably is using some kind of table system internally. Moving objects between tables is pretty old stuff for databases...[/size][/font]
You can move them, but only to different children collections.