I need opinions on application design

[Charles Abreu]

Hi all,

I'm starting to develop an Java Swing application that will exibit and let users navigate on territorial maps. A feature of the application is to exibit icons on  specific coordinates of the maps, representing places marks the users can click to interact with. So, I have a least to "layers": one for the map and another for this icons. I'm not in the field of graphical applications design, so my question may be to simplistic or wrong. The question is: what is the best way to handle the icons on the maps? I see two options, one being place the icons inside the svg drawing file, maybe as <symbol>, and positionig them accordingly; and the other being handle all these icons on the Swing side, painting them on demand over the JSVCanvas to meet the map showing. What is the best (or correct) approach?

Any other opinion about it?

Thanks,
Charles Abreu