It is possible in most editors to set how the TAB and other control characaters are handled.
In vi :set ts=4 will set up a 4 character tab. Use echo ":set ts=4" >> ~/.exrc automaticaly set this at startup.
If you prefer to use nano use the following does the same echo "set tabsize 4" >> ~/.nanorc
h**p://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0008/