That is a good maploading mechanism if youre working with a tilemap.
Say all your tiles are 32x32, and your map looks ilke this:
100300
000000
002000
000000
Then the 1 is at 0x0, so take that times 32x32 = 0x0.
Then the 3, it is at 3x0, so multiply that by the tilesize and you turn up with 96x0.
Then the 2, It's at 2x2, so just multiply those coordinates with tileize, and you turn up with 64x64.
Thats how you would calculate positions according to a fixedsize tilemap with fixedsize tiles.
If you want a more dynamic approach(not fixed sizes and fixed positions like that), you could just load objects(tiles, backgrounds, buttons etc) into different std::vectors. 1 vector that contains all the tiles, 1 for all the backgrounds etc. A simple approach to how a textfile could look is :
tile "Tilenamefromresourcehandler" xpos ypos isobstacle?
tile "grassleft" 32 24 1
tile "grassmiddle" 64 24 1
background "ilikehorses" 0 0
Etc! Good luck!