As for tools' brokeness regarding spaces/tabs/indentation heres a thread on the emacs list wherein emacs dev Stefan Monnier admits to the fact that emacs' handling in this regard is not perfect.
http://groups.google.com/group/gnu.emacs.help/browse_thread/thread/1bd0c33a3e755730/89cbd920ee651b5a?q=tabs+stefan+spaces+group:gnu.emacs.help#89cbd920ee651b5a -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
