Yuri Rubinsky was a writer, software executive, and well known promoter of the Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML), which was the basis for the now-ubiquitous XML. In Canada, he is probably best known as founding co-director of the influential Banff Publishing Workshop and for his work in applying technology to help visually impaired people. He died on January 21, 1996 after suffering a massive and unexpected heart attack.
Yuri was an author of both fiction and scholarly material, a publisher, and most importantly a visionary. His books include A History of The End of The World (1982), The Wankers’ Guide to Canada (1986) and (as co-author, with Marc Giacomelli) the novel Christopher Columbus Answers All Charges (1993). He was editor of Charles Goldfarb’s The SGML Handbook (1990) and SoftQuad’s The SGML Primer (1991). At the time of his death he was working on SGML on the Web (1997) which was completed by his friend and colleague Murray Maloney.