The tab-always-indent docs say:

-----------------------------
Controls the operation of the TAB key.
If t, hitting TAB always just indents the current line.
If nil, hitting TAB indents the current line if point is at the left margin
or in the line's indentation, otherwise it inserts a \"real\" TAB character.
If `complete', TAB first tries to indent the current line, and if the line
was already indented, then try to complete the thing at point.

Some programming language modes have their own variable to control this,
e.g., `c-tab-always-indent', and do not respect this variable."
  :group 'indent
--------------------------------
Why is there nothing stronger than nil? IOW why is it so hard to just have
tab be tab with no conditions?

In Miles Bader page on emacswiki http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/MilesBader
he has code for a literal-tab-mode.  So am I right in guessing that that is
the only approach if one wants tab characters to be entered?