Using Batik for basic SVG generation

Hello,

I am evaluating Batik for my work. My main requirement is to generate 
SVG documents in Java, which will mostly be used by JavaScript for 
display or simply streamed somewhere else. So I am interested in 
generating SVG documents as strings and have no interest in Swing or 
working with Java Graphics. I also need the rasterizer packages for 
creating images out of the SVG, which I have experimented with and am 
impressed with so far.

So what would be the recommended way of doing this? The main feature of 
Batik seems to be a mapping between Java's Graphics API and an SVG 
document, so that you can code using Java's built-in API's and have an 
SVG document come out of it.

Question 1: If I don't need any of the features of AWT/Swing/Graphics 
etc., would it make more sense to build the SVG myself using only Java's 
XML API's and only use the rasterizer from Batik? This seems to be the 
best route right now to avoid the overhead of programming to the 
SVGGraphics2D API.

Question 2: If I do this, and I have a huge SVG document as a String, is 
there an entry point back into SVGGraphics2D so that, if I eventually 
want to use the SVGGraphics2D features, I can start from an existing SVG 
document? I'm assuming there is such an entry point, but what happens if 
I then stream the document back out of SVGGraphics2D? I assume Batik 
will re-jigger the document in some way - can you comment on what will 
happen?

Any advice is appreciated!
Anthony