Navigation apparatus with enhanced positional display function

Claim 1

A map display system comprising: a first storage which stores map data; a display; a map display controller which displays a map on said display based on said map data; a second storage which segregates into different categories location data representing a plurality of locations and coordinate data corresponding to said plurality of locations and stores said location data of different categories into consecutive memory addresses of said second storage, so that access to location data of a second category can be made by incrementing or decrementing a currently selected address of a first category when location data of the first category is being displayed, said categories including at least one of the following: a location name list data category which includes that of said location data which represents names of locations; a user registered location data category which includes that of said location data which represents locations pertinent to a user; a destination data category which includes that of said location data which represents a destination identified by a user; and a route point data category which includes that of said location data which represents intermediate destinations identified by a user which are along a path of travel to said destination; a location name display device which determines location names to be displayed from said location data of a plurality of categories and displays the selected location names on said display based on said stored location data; and a selector which selects one of said location names displayed on said display and causes said map display controller to read a portion of said map data representing a portion of said map proximate to a location associated with said coordinate data corresponding to said location name selected by said selector and to display said portion of said map based on said portion of said map data.