An Extensible Markup Language (XML) document type definition (DTD) standard for the structure and contents of HDF-EOS files and their contents, and an equivalent standard in the form of schemas, have been developed. (“HDF-EOS” and variants thereof are defined in the first two of four related articles immediately preceding this one.) More specifically, this standard describes the structure and contents of a single HDF-EOS 5 file based on the HDF-EOS model as published in Volumes 1 and 2 of the HDF-EOS Library Users Guide. The DTD and schemas are easy-to-use representations of a complex file format, enabling display of data in multiple ways.