strip_tabs

  def strip_tabs(value)
    return "" unless value
    #Clean value
    if value.kind_of?(String)
      value = value.squish!
      encoding_options = {
        :invalid           => :replace,  # Replace invalid byte sequences
        :undef             => :replace,  # Replace anything not defined in ISO-8859-1
        :replace           => '',        # Use a blank for those replacements
        :UNIVERSAL_NEWLINE_DECORATOR => true       # Always break lines with \n
      }
      value = value.encode(Encoding.find('ISO-8859-1'), encoding_options)
      value = value.encode('UTF-8')
    end
    return value
  end