tabs to spaces with dev c++ v.4

i was just working with dev c++ v.4 and i have a question on the environment options part. it gives the option for (having to do with spacing and indentation) to have tabs into spaces. what does this mean and do? i first assumed that it simply just used tabs (so, for instance, you hit "tab" and then if you hit "backspace" it would delete that whole tab -- but apparently this ide just, when you hit "backspace" spaces back just one space, not the whole tab) as spaces, but i'm not sure now and i cant seem to figure it out. can anybody help me out with this?

thanks.

A lot of text readers, newsgroups for example, don't handle tabs very well and display them all wacky. If you change the tabs to spaces then those readers display the text more predictably. It's a good idea to use spaces instead of tabs :-)

okay, thanks. i think i will.