Bristol Technologies Inc., is intrepid. The small Danbury software company suing mighty Microsoft Inc. in U.S. District Court in Bridgeport has thrived on a strategy of tackling its biggest, most intimidating targets first.

In 13 days of putting on its antitrust case-in-chief, it showed that gutsiness was its game plan. Its main product is a programming tool “Wind-U,” which translates software from Windows to UNIX, the programmers’ traditional language. It broke into the telecommunications market not by starting small, but by aiming first for AT&T, the acknowledged “gorilla” of its field.