I would not say abandoned but it is certainly more complex and farther away from being implemented and deployed (if ever).
I agree with you that reverse conversions (or something like it) would be more effective in maintaining the peg but this doesn't make this proposed change a bad idea. I believe the print reduction is probably the most broken part of he peg system in Steem. I would remove it altogether, but failing that, increasing the limit is certainly better than not doing so.
As far as I can tell reverse conversion would have similar results in terms of any systemic break, indeed possibly worse. I'm not sure what you are suggesting there.