I feel bad for tab-lovers. A crushing defeat :)
Delightfully this is what Go has settled on.
(Who actually presses their tab key anymore? Even vim does that for you.)
http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/Indent_with_tabs,_align_with_space...
http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/SmartTabs
Intellij also has this capability, and likely other editors as well.
I prefer to do it by hand, but that is nothing but my personal preference. It has nothing to do with the scheme itself. If someone is opposed to doing things by hand, they don't need to do this by hand.