Intelligent (Latex-like) placement of figures

Hello,

I have not done much with Latex, so maybe I am all wrong, but from what I've picked up it seems Latex places  
figures intelligently on a page. Currently I sometimes get quite big gaps between text and a figure if the  
figure does not fit on a page:


	Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet,
	consectetuer adipiscing elit.




	----------------------------------new page
		<figure>
	Nullam erat felis, pulvinar
	ultrices, facilisis quis,
	rhoncus porttitor,
	...



If I am not mistaken Latex would pull the text from the second page up to the first, filling the gap.


Is it possible to get something like this with docbook? I thought about using float  
(http://www.sagehill.net/docbookxsl/FigureFloats.html) with something like float="start" (would it be  
'start'?).



best regards
Steffen