Do Background Colors Improve Program Comprehension in the #ifdef Hell?

Software-product-line engineering aims at the development of variable and reusable software systems. In practice, software product lines are often implemented with preprocessors. Preprocessor directives are easy to use, and many mature tools are available for practitioners. However, preprocessor directives have been heavily criticized in academia and even referred to as "#ifdef hell", because they introduce threats to program comprehension and correctness. There are many voices that suggest to use other implementation techniques instead, but these voices ignore the fact that a transition from preprocessors to other languages and tools is tedious, erroneous, and expensive in practice.