[Gdal-dev] Anyone heard of ESML? (maybe off-topic)

[Pushkar Pradhan]

I'm working on a project which requires us to read some of the scientific
data formats like HDF-EOS, netCDF etc.
Some colleagues suggested the use of Earth Science Markup Language
(http://esml.itsc.uah.edu) which extends XML for this very task. They claim
that with this user can define how the data is stored so that any format can
be read.
I think GDAL is able to read/write HDF/netCDF etc. and many other popular
formats (can it read HDF-EOS a variant of HDF?).
I'm trying to understand how ESML works. If anybody has heard about it, can
you tell how it compares with GDAL? Would it be of any help to the GDAL
project?

My apologies if this is off-topic or irrelevant.
Pushkar