Tab key inserts spaces out of the current span element and makes editor lose current styling

Hello All!

I am using CKEditor v4.4.3.

All text items on the page are inline, and they share one tool panel.

When I set config.tabSpaces = 4; 

Hitting tab key does insert 4 x   but causes current style selection to be lost. How can I get around this?

I tried to get the current span that the cursor is on but have had no luck. I also tried to get the current state of the buttons in the panel like: Bold, Italic, Font, FontSize etc. I was able retreive these using this

editor.ui.instances.Font.getValue()

and recover the lost styling through execCommand with an eventListener for key press. but this approach doesn't work for TextColor or BackgroundColor. I can't see the color value. All I can get is the current state of the button.

Is there a better way to get around this? Or maybe there is a fix coming up?

All help is appreciated. Thank you.