Steps to Reproduce:

    Create a file /tmp/test containing a literal tab character between characters, such as:
    a<tab>b

    Use cat /tmp/test | hexdump -C to confirm the file contains a 09 byte (tab) between the characters and that the terminal is not converting tabs to spaces.

    Display the file using cat /tmp/test.

    Select the displayed line with the mouse.

    Paste it using right-click into:

        another Konsole window, or

        an X11 terminal

Expected Result:
The pasted text includes a tab character.

Actual Result:
The pasted text contains spaces instead of a tab.

Additional Notes:
While the tab to spaces conversion is my primary concern, I don't believe that the clipboard should ever modify the copied text explicitly configured to do so. The default behavior should preserve the original data exactly, including whitespace characters like tabs.