Another The One Ring status update:

What works
Full texting conversation in empathy

Setting of presence works in empathy

• Available - frequency of checking of new texts based on activity
• Offline
• Busy - Checks for new texts every X minutes
• Hidden - Do Not Disturb

Bunches of bugs were fixed

• Closing and re-opening of chat windows (empathy)
• Switching between Available and Offline repeatedly
• etc

Known issues:

Empathy now shows TheOneRing as being capable of making calls but for some reason it never actually makes the call. I'm still investigating this.

On startup, might show previously shown messages