static boolean loadBufferedImage_useImageCache = true;

static BufferedImage loadBufferedImage(String snippetIDOrURLOrFile) ctex {
  ping();
  if (snippetIDOrURLOrFile == null) ret null;
  if (isURL(snippetIDOrURLOrFile))
    ret imageIO_readURL(snippetIDOrURLOrFile);

  if (isAbsolutePath(snippetIDOrURLOrFile)) 
    ret loadBufferedImage(new File(snippetIDOrURLOrFile));
  
  if (!isSnippetID(snippetIDOrURLOrFile))
    fail("Not a URL or snippet ID or file: " + snippetIDOrURLOrFile);
  S snippetID = "" + parseSnippetID(snippetIDOrURLOrFile);
  
  ifndef NoResourceLoader
  IResourceLoader rl = vm_getResourceLoader();
  if (rl != null)
    ret loadBufferedImage(rl.loadLibrary(snippetID));
  endifndef
  
  File dir = imageSnippetsCacheDir();
  if (loadBufferedImage_useImageCache) {
    dir.mkdirs();
    File file = new File(dir, snippetID + ".png");
    if (file.exists() && file.length() != 0)
      try {
        return ImageIO.read(file);
      } catch (Throwable e) {
        e.printStackTrace();
        // fall back to loading from sourceforge
      }
  }

  String imageURL = snippetImageURL_http(snippetID);
  print("Loading image: " + imageURL);
  BufferedImage image = imageIO_readURL(imageURL);

  if (loadBufferedImage_useImageCache) {
    File tempFile = new File(dir, snippetID + ".tmp." + System.currentTimeMillis());
    ImageIO.write(image, "png", tempFile);
    tempFile.renameTo(new File(dir, snippetID + ".png"));
    //Log.info("Cached image.");
  }

  //Log.info("Loaded image.");
  return image;
}

static BufferedImage loadBufferedImage(File file) ctex {
  ret loadBufferedImageFile(file);
}